the winter. Genetics and environmental factors can cause the variation among colonies of a particular species to be even bigger. Zooming out further, within a related group of different ant species, the differences can be enormous: Formica yessensis has colony sizes that are reported to be 306 million workers while Formica fusca colonies sometimes comprise only 500 workers. Supercolonies A supercolony occurs when many ant colonies over a large area unite. They still continue to recognize genetic differences in order to mate, but the different colonies within the super colony avoid aggression. Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of . In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). Of 33 ant populations tested along the stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony. The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants. In 2009, it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese, Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global "megacolony". This intercontinental megacolony represents the most populous recorded animal society on earth, other than humans. Another supercolony, measuring approximately wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004. Organizational terminology The following terminology is commonly used among myrmecologists to describe the behaviors demonstrated by ants when founding and organizing colonies: Monogyny Establishment of an ant colony under a single egg-laying queen. Polygyny Establishment of an ant colony under multiple egg-laying queens. Oligogyny Establishment of a polygynous colony where the multiple egg-laying queens remain far apart from one another in the nest. Haplometrosis Establishment of a colony by a single queen. Pleometrosis Establishment of a colony by multiple queens. Monodomy Establishment of a colony at a single nest site. Polydomy Establishment of a colony across multiple nest sites. Colony structure Ant colonies have a complex social structure. Ants’ jobs are determined and can be changed by age. As ants grow older their jobs move them farther from the queen, or center of