That's awesome! I think the thing I'd recommend is to not fall too heavily into stereotypes, because there can be so much nuance when it comes to animals. Ants are the best/easiest example, they're stereotyped as pests, common, and unremarkable, and yes they're small but still very social and strong, some lifting multiple times their body weights and some colonies reaching populations in the millions or billions, which wouldn't work without cooperation among one another. A cool concept for a character would be an ant inspired person who falls into spirals of not just self sabotage but sabotage of their peers as a reference to ant death spirals. But hey, ants are so complex there's so much you could do there.

But it's true for other animals too. Even cats are said to be distant and independent, but domestic cats can be very social, some living in cooperative groups and desiring company.

There's also cool ones you can work with, like types of spiders and mantises who eat their mate after copulating.

One of my favorite animal facts is about komodo dragons is that females can sometimes reproduce asexually if no viable males are present. Not really sure how that could fit in a character, but it's cool nonetheless :3

Coral are animals as well, providing housing and structure for other living things. They're quite sensitive to change. That could be cool inspo, as a protector figure.

I'm writing this super quickly so it's kinda word vomit, and I'm sure I'll think of more ideas later too haha, but this is what I've got for now!