pavement ant
tetramonium caespitum latin

The pavement ant, Tetramorium caespitum, is a common household pest.

The species is unique for lacking a worker caste, the queens and males living entirely off the care of the pavement ant.

The pavement ant serves as host to the ectoparasitic Teleutomyrmex schneideri.

And while carpenter ants can cause serious damage to a house if allowed to chew away unchecked over time, pavement ants are generally harmless.

"Primarily, we want to get a positive identification," Mr. Bergquist said, explaining that to an untrained eye, a pavement ant looks like, well, a pavement ant.

To a pest-control expert, however, some of those tiny brown pests crawling around yards and kitchens are not pavement ants but pharaoh ants, which react differently than do most ant species.

It is a worker-less obligate parasite to Tetramorium caespitum, the "lawn ant" or "pavement ant", and is thought to have evolved as an aberrant form of the genus Tetramorium.

With such systems, he said, ants like the small brown "pavement ants" can usually be counted on to bring the bait - and the poison - back to the nest, where they will distribute their lethal booty to friends and relatives.

Ants classified as pests include the pavement ant, yellow crazy ant, sugar ants, the Pharaoh ant, carpenter ants, Argentine ant, odorous house ants, red imported fire ant, and European fire ant.

Among the ants in the Northeast, he said, are pavement ants - the small brown ones that climb out of anthills to swarm over discarded ice-cream sticks on the sidewalk - and carpenter ants, the big black ones that excavate beams in houses when they need more spacious accommodations.