To do this, ideally one needs to collect members of all the different castes in the colony, from worker to queen, write a detailed description of their appearance, and give the species a Latin name, among other things, said Alice Laciny, a graduate student at the Natural History Museum Vienna who is an author of the new paper.

“We knew they existed, and we did experiments on them,” she said, “but it wasn’t described as an official species yet.”

Ms. Laciny is a member of an eclectic group of researchers who are united by their fascination with these insects and who describe in the new paper how C. explodens live and spectacularly die.

At 6 a.m., the ants come out of their nest and forage for food until about 6 p.m., the researchers found, although it is not exactly clear yet what they eat. A small squad of workers often stands at the entrances of the colony and touches every ant that comes in or out, apparently monitoring the movements of their sisters. The researchers also introduced a weaver ant, a natural predator of exploding ants, to observe the workers’ explosive response.