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Myrmicinae's Tapinoma sessile Journal


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22 replies to this topic

#21 Offline Myrmicinae - Posted July 15 2015 - 12:25 PM

Myrmicinae

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This colony is doing fairly well, but they are growing at an excruciatingly slow pace for such small ants; to be expected with this strange species, I suppose.  I ended up moving them forcefully into a new petri dish setup a while back.  For the first few days, they insisted on living in the foraging arena, but they eventually relocated into the nest.  The worker count is almost up to 30, but with only a very small pile of pupae and eggs.  They have been feeding on honey/bee-pollen/royal-jelly mixture, THA ant juice, and maple syrup, along with fruit flies and crickets (note that they will only consume the liquids of insects), although they rarely show much enthusiasm for any of these food sources.

 

T. sessile truly is a puzzle of a species.  The fact that they thrive so well and breed so prolifically in natural habitats suggests to me that there is something very important missing from the captive environment.  I hope that the answer is simple.


Edited by Myrmicinae, July 15 2015 - 12:27 PM.

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Journals on Formiculture:
Pheidole ceres
Tapinoma sessile

Old YouTube Channel:
ColoradoAnts

#22 Offline drtrmiller - Posted July 15 2015 - 12:40 PM

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Glad I'm not the only one having trouble.

 

I've murdered hundreds of workers that I caught about 5 weeks ago.  They don't eat anything but sugar, despite having like 50-100 queens.  Where they will cover a smashed roach on the driveway, they barely pick at smashed roaches in captivity.  They don't really lay eggs, brood doesn't develop—even if I feed them a dyed sugar food, they don't feed that to their larvae.

 

Over a year ago, I had about 1% better success when I would baby them and feed them fresh sugar/protein mixture liquid food like twice a day.  Now, however, the efforts are completely futile.


Edited by drtrmiller, July 15 2015 - 12:40 PM.

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#23 Offline Myrmicinae - Posted August 22 2015 - 2:31 PM

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There are about 40 workers now and a small collection of pupae.  Sadly, the queen has completely vanished.  I'm not sure what happened to her, but I think that she probably died and was eaten by the workers.  

 

I will continue to keep them anyway, but I doubt that the colony will last much longer without a queen.


Edited by Myrmicinae, August 22 2015 - 2:33 PM.

Journals on Formiculture:
Pheidole ceres
Tapinoma sessile

Old YouTube Channel:
ColoradoAnts




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