LOS ANGELES

Now, I know what you're thinking: Those tiny black creatures marching relentlessly toward the sugar bowl or streaming across the driveway are all infertile females who have no interest in sex at all. This is true. But when the days lengthen and the earth warms, the thoughts of a select class of ants turn to passion.

An ant queen produces all of the other ants in the colony. The vast majority of them are sterile female workers, but at certain times of the year she also produces males, as well as some females capable of laying eggs themselves. These future queens and their mates have a startling characteristic not shared by other ants in the colony.

People sometimes talk about being transported on the wings of love. For fertile ants, this is a literal concept. They have a pair of transparent wings on their backs, ready to bear them up out of the gloomy passages of the nest and into the soft spring air. In some ant species, both sexes fly. In others, only the males are winged, while the would-be queens have to crawl out of the nest and send out pheromones--chemical come-hither signals--to the more widely ranging males.

The flying forms of ants are called "alates," after the Latin word for "wing," though the wings will be used only for the briefest of times.

I imagine the alates underground before liftoff, as nervous as any cast member backstage on opening night, fidgeting and rustling their paper-crisp wings. The so-called nuptial flights are doomed in wet or windy weather, so the insects must worry about rain. But if the conditions are right, the alates--thousands upon thousands of them--rise in clouds, flying away from the nest in search of aerial romance.