Text Leveling System

Armies of Ants

RDQ:	758	Max Word/Sent	24	Total Words	2102		Diff Words	601
Lex	690	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	1320	62.8%	Hi freq	230	38.3%
AR	3.2	Long Sentences	1.5	Low Freq occurs	85	4%	Low freq	52	8.7%

The morning sun shines above the hot rain forest.  
Something strange is going on under the tall, green trees. 
A soft hissing sound rises from the forest floor. Insects leap into the air. They hit against tree trunks. Flies buzz close to the ground. And every now and then, a bird swoops down to grab an insect. 
What is happening here? An army of ants is on the march! These are army ants. They live in the hot, wet parts of Africa and South America. 
These ants feed on almost any kind of insect or small animal in their path - from grasshoppers and spiders to nesting birds. 
One army ant alone cannot do much arm. But hundreds of thousands of them are a dangerous enemy. Working together, they sting their prey. They use their strong jaws and sharp teeth to cut into it. Then they share the food. 
Army ants do not build nests. They stay in a different place every night - under a rock, in a log, or in a tree trunk. They form a kind of living net. They use their strong claws to hook their legs and bodies together. They rest in a huge ball. 
In the morning, they separate and start off on the hunt again. They might march in a straight line or in a fan shape. There are no real leaders. One group of ants will lead the way for a short distance. Then another group crowds to the front and takes over. This push of ants from behind keeps the swarm moving forward. 
The largest soldier ants stay on the outside. These ants protect the rest of the swarm from enemies. Every few weeks, the ants stop moving. It's time for the queen ant to lay her eggs. The queen is the biggest ant in the colony. 
The ants choose a safe place and gather around their queen. Some of the worker ants find food to share with the other ants. Soon the queen lays many thousands of eggs. After about three weeks, the army goes on the march again. Army ants are not the only amazing member of the ant family. There are about 9,000 kinds of ants living all over the world. The only places without ants are cold and icy - like the Arctic and Antarctic. Ants have been around since before the days of the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs died out millions of years ago. But ants are still here! There are thousands of kinds of ants. But their bodies all follow the same basic design. An ant's head is usually large. Two long feelers, or antennas, stretch out from the front of the head. An ant uses its feelers to smell, recognize other ants, and examine pieces of food. When an ant is busy, its feelers are always moving. The head also includes the jaws. Instead of moving up and down as our jaws do, an ant's jaws open to the side. Ants use their jaws to pick up food, carry their young, and fight enemies. Many ants have sharp teeth in their jaws. A thin neck connects the ant's head to its trunk. Three pairs of legs are attached to the trunk. The foot of each leg has two hooked claws. Ants use their claws to climb trees, dig up dirt, and fight enemies. The ant's thin waist connects the trunk to its abdomen or gaster. The gaster holds the ant's stomach and a special pouch for storing food. This pouch is called the crop. An ant can spit up food that is in the crop and share it with other ants. The crop stretches easily to make space for more food. Some kinds of ants have a poisonous stinger at the end of the gaster. The bulldog ant of Australia is one of the most dangerous ants. This ant hunts alone. It hides under a low bush and waits for insects. When one comes along, the bulldog ant leaps out and grabs the insect with its strong jaws. The ant pushes its poisonous stinger deep into the insect. Then it tears its dead prey into pieces. Bulldog ants can run very fast. They will even chase people! The fire ant is also a stinging ant. It has made its way into the United States from South America. The fire ant's stinger feels like a red-hot needle jabbing the skin. Fire ants are a big problem for farmers. They build large nest mounds in fields so farmers have a hard time cutting their hay. Fire ants also sting cows. some poisonous ants don't have a stinger. They have a poison gland inside the gaster. They squirt the poison at their enemies from an opening at the tip of the gaster. Ants are social insects. They live together in groups called colonies. Different ants in the colony have different jobs. They work together for the good of the whole group. The most important member of any ant colony is the queen. When queen ants are born, they have four wings. So do the make ants. As soon as they are old enough, the queens and the males fly high into the air and mate. Soon afterward the males die. Each queen flies off to start her own colony. First she sheds her wings. Then she finds a good place to build a nest. She lays here eggs in this nest. Ant eggs are so tiny that people usually cannot see them. In a few days the queen's eggs hatch into larvae. They have no legs. Soon some of the larvae spin white, silky cocoons; others grow a thick, clear case. This is called the pupal stage. After a few weeks, the adult ants come out of their cocoons or cases. Female worker ants are usually the first ones born. They will gather food, defend the colony, and repair the nest. Ants build many kinds of nests. Some kinds of black garden ants make their homes underground. They use the tiny claws on their feet to dig tunnels and rooms in the dirt. The rooms have different purposes. Some are for storing food. Other rooms hold the eggs and the larvae. If a room gets too hot or too cold or too wet, worker ants will move the eggs and the larvae to another room. There is usually a special room for the queen ant and her newest eggs. Thousands and thousands of ants often live together in one underground home. Many kinds of red ants live in the woods. Some start their nests underground. They pile up dead leaves, dirt, and pine needles and weave them together. The nest has many tunnels and rooms. In warm weather, the ants live above ground. During the winter, they move underground. Carpenter ants make their nests in the trunks and branches of trees. Sometimes carpenter ants build nests in the wooden beams of houses. when they chew tunnels in healthy trees or house beams, they can cause much damage. The cleverest nest builders are the weaver ants. They live in treetops in Africa, Asia, and Australia. One colony of weaver ants often lives in four or five trees. There may be half a million members in the colony. Weaver ants make their nests by pulling several leaves together to form a pocket. One group lines up on the edge of a leaf. These ants hold onto the leaf with their rear feat. Then they grab a nearby leaf in their jaws. If the distance is too great, the workers form chains. Each ant holds onto the waist of the ants in front of it.While this group of ants holds the leaf edges together, another group brings out the larvae. Each worker ant gently hold a larvae in its jaws. The larva lets out a small bit of silk the sticks to the leaf's edge. The worker carries the larva to the edge of the second leaf. This draws out the silk from the larva like a thread and binds the two leaves together. The nest, hanging from the branches, looks like a silken leafy cocoon. Some kinds of ants can't build their own nests or take care of their young. They keep slaves to do their work. Amazon ants are an example of this kind of ant. They are very large, with bright red or black, shiny bodies. Their jaws are big and curved. They can't use them to dig in the earth or pick up their larvae or pupas. They can't even get their own food. their slave workers have to feed them and take care of the nest. At home, the Amazon ants are very lazy. They hang around the next cleaning their shiny bodies or begging their slaves for food. But when Amazon ants look for slaves, they turn into brave fighters. As soon as an Amazon ant finds  a nest that belongs to another kind of ant, it quickly returns home. Its body leaves a special smell on the ground along the way. The other amazon ants follow this smelly trail straight to the other nest. They attack the other ants and carry away their cocoons. The young are then raised by the slave workers back at the home nest. Ants eat many different kinds of foods. Army ants eat insects and other small animals. Harvester ants gather the seeds from plants such as wheat. They carry the seeds to their nest and store them in special rooms. Worker ants use their jaws to tear off the hard seed coverings. Then they chew the kernels into a soft pulp. This is sometimes called ant bread. Harvester ants always have a supply of seeds and ant bread in their storerooms. Leafcutter ants grow their own food in huge underground nests. More than a million ants often live in one nest. At night, columns of workers leave the nest. They cut pieces of leaves from the trees and other plants. They carry the leaf pieces back to their nest by holding them above their heads like umbrellas. For this reason, they are often called umbrella - or parasol - ants. At the nest, smaller worker ants chop the leaves into tiny pieces. Then other, even smaller, workers chew the bits into a soft mush. They use this mush for growing fungus in underground gardens. The ants feed on the fungus. Silver ants in the Sahara desert in Africa hunt at high noon. They avoid their enemies, who are hiding from the noontime heat. A silver ant hunts alone. It looks for insects and tiny animals that have died from the heat. Silver ants' legs are much longer than the legs of most other ants. Their long legs raise them up and away from the hot sand. They try not to touch the ground too often or for too long. sometimes they hold two of their legs in the air as they hip-hop along. Honey ants live in the southwestern part of the United States. During cool, wet weather, the worker ants gather a sweet liquid called honeydew from flowers and other insects. They store it in their crops until they are back in their nest. There they spit the honeydew into the mouths of large, young workers. These workers are called repletes. Their crops stretch and stretch as they fill with honeydew.The repletes become so big that they can't move. During hot, dry weather, honeydew is hard to find. But hungry workers just go to the repletes. A replete will spit up honeydew into a hungry workers' mouth. There are millions of billions of ants in the world. Life on earth would be different if they disappeared. Here's why: Ants eat hug numbers of insect pests. Ants scatter seeds. Ants eat the dead bodies of many insects and small animals.  Other animals such as frogs, toads, woodpeckers, lizards, and anteaters eat ants for food. Ants stir up the soil, enriching it. Without ants to do this job, plants and forests would die. Animals that eat the plants for food would also die. Thousands of kinds of plants and animals would slowly vanish from the earth. Of course, some ants can be pests. But, overall, ants do far more good than bad. Ants are very special insects. They can communicate with each other. They divide up their work to carry out hard jobs. And ants work for the good of the whole group. The ant also has been successful because it is such a tiny insect. Other, much bigger animals - like the dinosaurs - have come and gone. But the ants are still here!]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Formal

Chapters

Features

Topic

Size

Cooperation

Food Chain

Nature

Insects

Low Frequency Words

abdomen	antarctic	antennas	carries	cleverest
cocoon	cocoons	colonies	colony	columns
communicate	coverings	curved	edges	enriching
fungus	gaster	gland	harvester	healthy
honeydew	kernels	larva	larvae	leaf's
leafcutter	liquid	mounds	nesting	noontime
overall	parasol	poisonous	pouch	pulp
pupal	pupas	recognize	replete	repletes
sahara	separate	silken	social	soldier
southwestern	stinger	storerooms	swarm	thread
weaver	woodpeckers