2450 replies to this topic

[Scrixx]

Dunno how soaked the ground will be, but there has been a fast moving cloud of precipitation that started on the eastern side of the Salton Sea and has quickly moved its way up north into the main central road of Joshua Tree.

 

Need a confirmation of how wet the area will be, might go tonight.

 

 

 

UPDATE: 12:20

 

 

UPDATE 2, headings towards 29 palms:

 

 

UPDATE 3:

 

Might drive into that area tonight, do some night anting and stay til the next day. See what has flown. Could very well come back with nothing, but the rain looks heavy enough in some parts.

 

Did you ever make the trip? What website is the data from? New to ant keeping and I hope I could get a few more before the season ends!

[dspdrew]

Nobody went. It was clear that none of that rain ever reached the ground. It's just way too hot and dry out. Next weekend might be a different story.

[dspdrew]

I have never had such bad luck black lighting before. I've been out to the canyon about six times this year, and there's almost no ants flying every time. I saw a total of 5 ants on my black light tonight, and the conditions were perfect. I don't get it. Maybe it's because we went right back to never getting any rain again. We've gotten almost no rain since December, so the ground is about as dry as can be. Luckily, one of the five queens I found was a Camponotus fragilis, which I was hoping to find soon. The rest were just Crematogaster.

[dspdrew]

The area just north of the Mojave Preserve just got some good rain again yesterday evening, so I'll be heading out there again tomorrow night. I'm hoping they don't get rain in the same exact spots tomorrow, or that might screw things up for me.

[dspdrew]

The trip turned out pretty good. At first I thought I was screwed because when I showed up the wind was blowing really hard, but I ended up finding Novomessor cockerelli that night anyway. There really wasn't much more activity than that. I didn't try black lighting the first night, just walked around looking for wandering N. cockerelli queens. This time after it got light I actually still found quite a few more. Usually they hide and are almost impossible to find by that time.
 
A little later in the morning after the sun came up, Forelius sp. started flying and were all over the place for the rest of the day. I drove up Nipton road a little ways and stopped to check some other spots out that got pretty intense rain two days before. To my delight, the first founding chamber I dug up was a Myrmecocystus cf. mendax. This spot was almost all honeypot ants, with maybe 1 to 2 percent of the founding chambers being Pogonomyrmex rugosus, which I already have enough of. It looked like the M. mexicanus and M. navajo might have flown the night of the rain, because they were already quite deep and hard to find. the Myrmecocystus cf. mendax and M. mimicus must have flown that morning, because a lot of them were just starting to dig their nests.
 
Here's what the area looked like.
 

 

 
 
For most of the morning the weather was perfect--cloudy with temps in the high 70's to low 80's. As the day went on, storm clouds slowly started forming, and eventually there was lightning so I headed back to my car. I figured this would be a good time to get some sleep, so I slept for a while in my truck while it was cool out.
 
I woke up to rain drops hitting my forehead through my cracked open window. There were some pretty intense storms going through the area so I drove down the hill to check them out.
 

 

 
 
All the rain was bringing out the desert tortoises. They like to drink the water off the roads. It makes me wonder how many of them get run over by cars when they do this.
 

 
 
I wanted to get it off the road, but no way was I going to touch the thing haha. I don't need any legal trouble.
 
From what I read, I guess this one was adopted by someone as part of some Nevada program of some sort because it has a tracking device glued to its shell, as you can see in the video.
 
Well, after it got dark and most of the storms blew away, I decided to try black lighting. That didn't last long before there were more bolts of lightning right over my head, so I quickly aborted that. I'm terrified of getting struck.   It looked like nothing but Crematogaster, Solenopsis, and Dorymyrmex flying anyway so I just headed home.

[SoySauce]

Nice Drew. Congrats. Thanks for sharing. The tortoise video is awesome.

Edited by SoySauce, July 23 2017 - 5:19 AM.

[SoySauce]

It's supposed to monsoon and be cooler tomorrow. I'm definitely gonna try to make it out there.

[dspdrew]

Yeah it is. I'm watching it closely because I have Wednesday off, and I'm still hoping to get Acromyrmex. I also wouldn't mind finding more M. mexicanus.

[dspdrew]

Had some decent rain all over the desert yesterday. This particular storm hung around for about an hour and probably dropped quite a bit of rain.

 

 

 

I know the area has gotten some rain already, but I don't think it was ever enough to trigger any Myrmecocystus flights, so this one might have done it.

 

I'll probably be going there tonight, among a few other spots.

[soulsynapse]

Good luck! I'm not super keen on going back out that way for a while yet. Looks like the spot you're going has gotten a lot of rain though.

[dspdrew]

Almost nowhere in the CA deserts but the area right around Nipton has gotten a lot of rain.

[dspdrew]

Well after driving all the way out there, I found they closed the entire length of Hwy 66 that received all the rain. It probably washed away somewhere between Chambless and Danby like it does every year. Now that I look at the map, I probably could have gotten out there on dirt roads. Either way, I ended up driving up Goffs road into Goffs, and heading just a couple thousand feet up Lanfair road, before entering the Mojave Preserve. I saw a strong storm cell go over this spot, and like I figured it was pretty wet. It didn't take long before I started finding Myrmecocystus mexicanus queens in the process of digging their nests. I was able to grab quite a few of them without doing much digging at all. Just as it started to get light, as always, Pheidole started flying like crazy.

 

After this what was a small problem with my truck turned into a big problem, and I ended up driving to a mechanic in Needles to get it partially fixed. On my way home, I stopped off at a couple spots I know of along Hwy 95 where lots of Acromyrmex can be found. The area never got that much rain, but apparently they will fly no matter what if the ground gets wet enough. All the water flows through these washes from all the rain further out in the desert, and a lot of it accumulates in these giant puddles that remain there for a good portion of the summer. There were two of them that had trees right next to them, and tons of Acromyrmex founding chambers. I was able to dig up 18 total, but then ended up killing 10 of them by accidentally cooking them in my truck. I didn't have them in my regular cooler, and never realized how well that one holds the cool air in. Not sure if it was because it was just a crappy little cooler, or because I didn't have containers of water in it like I do in the other one for humidity and temperature stability.

 

All in all it was a pretty good trip. I got both species I went out there for in almost the exact spots I expected them to be in.

[kudofo]

Nice too bad I missed it

[soulsynapse]

Edited by soulsynapse, August 1 2017 - 5:03 PM.

[AntsCalifornia]

I've been really wanting a myrmecocystus mexicanus or navajo, but I'm really worried that the nupital flights are already done. Are they still flying? If so, where would they be located. I live in southern california.  I only want mexicanus or navajo because of the yellow color, and am really hoping that I didn't just blow it and have to wait a whole year. 

[dspdrew]

It's possible they could still fly in the Victor Valley area. They haven't gotten any decent summer rain for two years now.

[AntsCalifornia]

You said victor valley, but all that shows up on the map is victorville. Is that what you meant? Also, how do I find out when it might rain? One last question, how long after a flight could you expect to dig up queens in the desert?

[gcsnelling]

Victorville is a town in the Victor Valley region of the Mojave desert.

[Zegorzalek]

Decent amount of rain in the Barstow/Mojave Desert area to the SE of Victorville last night... I am going out to check nests now to see if they are prepping nuptials ;p

 

Edit: noon... after a several hours driving about NE of Barstow it seems that while many areas received rain, it was not a "soaker". No aleates flying that I could find. Will keep looking.

Edited by Zegorzalek, August 31 2017 - 11:00 AM.

[AntsCalifornia]

I live in the riverside area, I was wondering if honeypot ants live where I am. Also, do you think I could find them today, we had a decent thunderstorm, one more coming up, and around 100 degrees.