Among the longest-living insects, the ant population could be threatened as extreme heat sweeps across the globe due to the deepening climate crisis.

Earlier this year, heatwaves in parts of Gauteng caused an influx of ants into households as the insects left their nests for cooler conditions.

Dr Tom Bishop, a lecturer at the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University, told Daily Maverick, "The main defence that ants have against extreme temperatures is to not be active. When it gets too hot, ants stay inside their nests and the colony is usually buffered from this as they are buried in the soil. However, the foraging ants won't want to go outside their nest because of the heat.

"Their only way of getting food becomes cut off and they can only forage at dawn, dusk or cooler parts [of the day]. That's the impact we see: the gradual starving of the colony."

A research paper shows that extreme cold and heat cause the metabolism, development and performance of ants to decline to near zero. The same paper also found that ants do at times move their nests to cooler terrains to shield their eggs and young from delayed development caused by extreme temperatures.

Heatwaves often cause their influx into households from back gardens as they seek cooler spaces to forage and take shelter....