Q. Are there microscopic ants or other insects? If not, why not?
A. There are some very small ants, but they are not quite microscopic. The smallest known ant is the tiny worker of the species Carebara bruni, only eight-tenths of a millimeter long.
In the classic work “The Ants,” by Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson, the relatively giant queen of a related small species, Carebara vidua, is carrying two minuscule workers, clinging with their mandibles to the hairs of one of her legs as she looks for a new nest. The size difference has been compared to that of a hippopotamus and a mouse.
There are much smaller insects, notably the delicate wasps called fairyflies in the family Mymaridae. One of them, Kikiki huna, is believed to be the smallest flying insect, with a body length as short as about 160 micrometers in some females. (A human hair is 100 to 180 micrometers in diameter.) The species was discovered in 2000 in Hawaii and announced in The Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society.
Its discoverer, John T. Huber, speculates that the lower limit of body size in a free-moving insect is determined in part by physical function. Is the body large enough, for example, to include enough cells to make up working legs and wings? Is it big enough to enclose its own eggs?
Some well-known microscopic bugs are even smaller, like Sarcopteds scabiei, the so-called human itch mite that causes the skin inflammation scabies, and Demodex folliculorom, the follicle mites that infest human eyelash follicles. But these mites are actually eight-legged arachnids, not six-legged insects. question@nytimes.com.
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