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Entire Pheidole megacephala colony slaughtered by parasitic mites

pheidole megacephala parasitic mites parasites

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#1 Offline dspdrew - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:01 PM

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I received this Pheidole megacephala colony from Vendayn about two weeks ago. For the first couple days, the containers that contained the colony sat on my floor in a cardboard box. I then moved the containers into a large bin with the sides completely covered in fluon. I put a hot light on the main container to dry it out, and convince them to move into the test tube I had prepared for them.

 

I didn't notice much activity unless I put some food in there, and even then I would only see a few of them coming out to eat. Each day though, I was finding a few more dead workers laying in the bottom of the bin than the day before. I know this species is pretty scrawny and hairy, but something about some of them looked almost like they had some really bad hairdos, and all pretty unique to one another too. I didn't think much of it and mainly just left them alone.

 

Two weeks later, I came home from work to find hundreds of them dead on the bottom of the bin.

 

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At first I was pretty pissed off thinking I have another mystery mass die-off on my hands. There were still a couple of them running around very erratically, and with what looked like some of the worst "hairdos" I had seen yet, or at least something about them made them look almost mutilated. I of course figured I might be able to get to the bottom of this with a quick look under the microscope.

 

Well sure enough, this mystery was solved. They had been slaughtered by tens of thousands of parasitic mites. Every dead ant in the bin was covered with these mites.

 

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There were even a few other insects in there covered in these mites too, one being a little jumping spider. These were definitely the smallest mites I have ever seen. Usually I can pretty easily recognize a mite with my naked eyes. Most of those I see are much larger, non-parasitic mites like spider mites or compost mites, but these were those turtle looking mites that almost look like super thin, empty turtle shells with really tiny legs.

 

Obviously I got a little panicked at first, thinking my whole apartment could be infested, but then remembered I had fluon on the sides and hoped that was able to stop these things from climbing out. I moved everything into my bathtub for the time being, and prepared a very small transparent container with fluon on the sides and dropped a few of the dead ants in it. I watched it carefully and could see these mites were terrible climbers. They could hardly climb smooth surfaces that weren't even coated with fluon. As for the fluon surfaces, they couldn't even come close, just immediately falling down and ending up on their backs unable to move. This was a huge relief. I put some of them in alcohol and it took a while, but eventually killed them. I tried putting a few in a bleach/water mixture, but didn't wait long enough to see them die; they seemed to just keep walking around as if it was hardly affecting them.

 

Using alcohol and bleach, I finally killed everything off, including whatever was left of the colony (as if any of them were even going to survive).

 

Here's a video I shot of the mites still feeding on the dead ants.

 

 

 

The fact they were such bad climbers wasn't the only good news, when I got home from work today, I took a look at the small container of them, and they were all dead and slightly curled up as if they had dried out. I'm guessing these either have an extremely short life-span, or they can't go for more than a day without water or food. Either way that's very good news. I assumed they had to have some sort of vulnerability, otherwise after seeing this, you'd think they would have eradicated every insect out there.



#2 Offline Vendayn - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:12 PM

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I had these same mites on my Acromyrmex queen you gave me. My neighbor has better tools than I do to see close up stuff, probably a better camera too but he didn't bring it.

 

I think either they were on the Pheidole already, and something caused the mite population to explode (like you think). But, the whole time I had them I saw no sign of anything. Or, the oats I was using had MILLIONS of mites and we threw all of that out. I think that might have been part of it.

 

Either way, I didn't tell you...but today with help of my neighbor, saw these mites in my termite farm. So, I ended up emptying them outside in a wooded area. So, I've taken every ant you gave me and my Dorymyrmex...and put them in the guest shower. They do not have any mites at all, but the shelf had a few of these mites crawling around. Luckily, I had slippery stuff to keep Argentine ants out...so, all the ant farms are completely 100% fine. Me and my neighbor spent 3 hours making sure there were no mites in any of the ant farms. But, you are right...they are bad climbers.

 

Quite a disaster. And I want to thank you for giving me the warning to check. Even if they didn't get in the ant farm, it could have been a huge disaster. I have no idea the source, unless they were already on the ants (they were nesting in my neighbor's wall) or came from the oats themselves.


Edited by Vendayn, February 20 2015 - 6:13 PM.


#3 Offline Gregory2455 - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:19 PM

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Do you have an image of the queen?



#4 Offline Etherwulf - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:20 PM

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Or rather, did the queen survive the infestation?


 

#5 Offline dspdrew - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:20 PM

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I had these same mites on my Acromyrmex queen you gave me. My neighbor has better tools than I do to see close up stuff, probably a better camera too but he didn't bring it.

 

I think either they were on the Pheidole already, and something caused the mite population to explode (like you think). But, the whole time I had them I saw no sign of anything. Or, the oats I was using had MILLIONS of mites and we threw all of that out. I think that might have been part of it.

 

Either way, I didn't tell you...but today with help of my neighbor, saw these mites in my termite farm. So, I ended up emptying them outside in a wooded area. So, I've taken every ant you gave me and my Dorymyrmex...and put them in the guest shower. They do not have any mites at all, but the shelf had a few of these mites crawling around. Luckily, I had slippery stuff to keep Argentine ants out...so, all the ant farms are completely 100% fine. Me and my neighbor spent 3 hours making sure there were no mites in any of the ant farms. But, you are right...they are bad climbers.

 

Quite a disaster. And I want to thank you for giving me the warning to check. Even if they didn't get in the ant farm, it could have been a huge disaster. I have no idea the source, unless they were already on the ants (they were nesting in my neighbor's wall) or came from the oats themselves.

 

Yeah, I'm now starting to think it's a very good idea to keep a band of fluon around the outside of any out worlds or containers you keep any critters in.

 

So are you sure these are the same mites you saw? These are a lot different looking than most of the mites you see, so it should be pretty easy to tell. Probably the closest looking I've seen are the mites that kill off honey bee colonies.



#6 Offline dspdrew - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:23 PM

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Do you have an image of the queen?

 

This colony was living in containers full of sand, so I was never really able to see anything. I'm just taking Vendayn 's word for what was there.

 

 

Or rather, did the queen survive the infestation?

 

I can't see how it would have been possible considering the amount of ants they killed off in just hours, majors and all.



#7 Offline Vendayn - Posted February 20 2015 - 6:40 PM

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The colony originally had 7 queens (I know a couple originally didn't make it. But, there was definitely at the very least, 3 queens and probably more), and when I gave them to Dspdrew there was TONS of egg piles. They were doing great. They were actually one of my favorite colonies I've had, very easy to care for.

 

And I'm not really an expert on mites, but they looked really similar to your pictures to what me and my neighbor saw. Though, there were also larger mites (the more populated ones) in the oats. I don't really know mites too well, so maybe there are a lot of different species of them.

 

I know its been said, but freeze everything. Even food in jars or food from even the store. I can't think of how else they'd have gotten in the ants, except the oats. I had the Pheidole for a couple/few months and there weren't any mites at all. The only thing I put in there, that I never thought to freeze, were the oats which had mites in it. But, I'm not sure why there would be parasitic mites inside a container of oats...I never looked to see if there were any in there.

 

I do know, when we examined the shelf, there were indeed a few of these tiny mites crawling on it where the Pheidole used to be. Most looked dead though. So, maybe they did come in on the Pheidole and something changed to make them explode in population and the oats were just a coincidence.

 

I think this might be a good lesson to have some kind of slippery barrier on everything (like you suggest) and freeze EVERYTHING.


Edited by Vendayn, February 20 2015 - 6:40 PM.


#8 Offline drtrmiller - Posted February 20 2015 - 7:00 PM

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I wish I had some of these mites for testing.




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#9 Offline Chromerust - Posted February 20 2015 - 8:53 PM

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Wild caught colonies can absolutely bring parasitic mites with them. Grain mites you find in oats aren't a huge threat unless there are a lot of them, then they can stress the ants out and cause die offs from my experience.



#10 Offline Vendayn - Posted February 20 2015 - 10:33 PM

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Yeah, wild colonies do have that sometimes. Its just, I had them a while and they were growing at a really nice rate with large brood. Since I'm moving sometime end of the year, I thought I'd give Drew a good colony of them. Turns out, they somehow got infested with mites whether from when I got them or something else. Kinda disappointing is all, as they were doing so good.

 

Maybe the conditions changed from when I was keeping them, and giving them to Drew that the mites liked or something. And since the mites were so tiny, I probably wouldn't have noticed a tiny/small infestation of them and figured it was good...with all the eggs and stuff. The population of mites must have exploded really quick, in any case. I know at least in the termite farm, the mites were growing in numbers quick and I didn't even notice until really recently. Pretty much ended that colony of termites.



#11 Offline Vendayn - Posted February 25 2015 - 7:48 PM

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Has anyone tried dealing with mites, by putting an ant colony in the freezer for a minute or two? I imagine this wouldn't work on all ants, but...in theory I imagine the mights would die pretty quick.



#12 Offline Ants4fun - Posted February 25 2015 - 7:57 PM

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In Costa Rica several times I put Solonopsis invitation in my freezer sometimes up to 5 or 10 minutes at a time with no die offs. It is quite strange since fire ants are a species that can't tolerate harsh winters..

#13 Offline Vendayn - Posted February 25 2015 - 8:06 PM

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Well, I just did this with the Pogonomyrmex rugosus queen and followed through with all my ants, including Dorymyrmex bicolor I got the other day. I left them in the freezer for 2 minutes and took them out. They woke up after a couple minutes, and no sign of mites.

 

Really bad mite infestation, and I guess they got into all my colonies before I even noticed the mites in the first place. Guess I missed some when me and my neighbor were looking.

 

Good thing though, all the clumps of mites on my P. rugosus queen (that Drew gave me) are in the test tube dead...its been almost 20 minutes and no movement at all. So, these mites die easily in the cold. The queen+worker is even drinking honey and going back as normal.



#14 Offline dspdrew - Posted February 25 2015 - 8:26 PM

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That's interesting. It seems most mites are practically invincible. I wonder how many this would work on. BTW, which mites got all over the queens I gave you?



#15 Offline Vendayn - Posted February 25 2015 - 8:54 PM

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65q24g4g5f


Edited by Vendayn, March 9 2018 - 7:17 PM.


#16 Offline dspdrew - Posted February 25 2015 - 9:44 PM

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Hmm, those parasitic ones did seem pretty sensitive, as mine died within hours of having no food or water.

 

I just tried putting one of my mite infested Veromessor pergandei queens in the freezer for five minutes, and it died. The mites of course were still alive... These mites are not the same as the ones that killed this Pheidole colony. I'm not even completely sure they're parasitic, as they don't seem to be feeding on the queens they're riding on.



#17 Offline Gregory2455 - Posted February 25 2015 - 10:03 PM

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Solonopsis invitation

Auto-correct? :lol:


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#18 Offline Ants4fun - Posted February 26 2015 - 5:26 AM

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Hardly. I 'Invited' my Solenopsis Into the freezer! : )

#19 Offline SMILEforAnts - Posted February 26 2015 - 5:22 PM

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 I think these mites were a major factor of a lot of worker die-offs I had. My Pheidole megacephala colony had 5 queens and 200+ workers and a couple of larvae when I first caught the colony. I had no problems until I fed them live baby crickets from a pet store I've never bought from before. I purchased crickets from them because they were a lot cheaper than other places. Now I know why.

 

At first the crickets seemed healthy, I placed them into a container with cricket food and water. Fed my colony 2 or 3 crickets, then over the next couple of days, a lot of workers looked like they where twitching and dying and curling up. I thought maybe it was stress from the recent move, so I ignored it. More and more worker started dying, so I knew something was wrong. I looked into the container the crickets were in, and 2 crickets were on their back kind of twitching and then I looked closely at the test tube filled with water and there were a lot of pink specks. Got my phone with the macro lens attached and took a closer look. It was those mites that you have pictures of. Went back to the nest, and I noticed specks inbetween the glass and the plaster, around the chamber of garbage, yet again, it was the same mites from the crickets. That's when I decided to move them into a smaller plaster nest, because they got from 200+ to around 30-60 workers, and since the eggs were still developing, there were no pupae to replace the workers lost.

 

First lesson for me, never buy from that sh** place pet store again lol, and two, I boil my crickets from now on and store them in the freezer. Also I tried that lemon thing that I've read so ants will use it to rid themselves of the mites, but it didn't work for my colony.


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