Hi, I understand all of you are quite upset about what Mikey has done and the example he has set for the younger generation. I am personally not someone to release an invasive species but I do struggle with understanding certain taboos in the hobby as well as avoiding them (if only by sheer ignorance).
Here are a few questions I personally have: If you keep several queens to ensure one is fertile, is it ethical to release the others even if they are as well or allow them to establish them release them, or just euthanize the group? What method of doing those would be considered humane? If your colony is producing alates, is allowing the alates to fly outdoors to mate also considered unethical (only concerning native/naturalized species) or is this a responsible manner to help add to the gene pool the ant keeper unavoidably altered by capturing (a) fertile queen(s)?
I am not a moron nor a child, I am a student who has taken an interest in the hobby and is aware of the presence of his own ignorance in certain matters. I am sure there are others like me who need information like this readily available when things seem vague or in special context.
Many of you are outraged by what has happened, but I think this provides an opportunity to have educated discussions on what is legal, ethical, and moral in the antkeeping hobby. I am not condoning verbal warfare on the forum, just open discussion to allow individuals like me to at least get the information and experience of others to answer these questions, going for both Formiculture members and AntsCanada followers. At the very least, this will help prevent mistakes from occurring rather than fussing over spilled milk.
If you keep several queens to ensure one is fertile, is it ethical to release the others even if they are as well or allow them to establish them release them: Yes, I think this is completely fine (so long as they're native to your area), because those extra alates you caught would've had a shot at founding a colony if you didn't catch them. As for established colonies, I think this is fine if they're again, native, and as long as they aren't a super dominating species in your area.
If your colony is producing alates, is allowing the alates to fly outdoors to mate also considered unethical (only concerning native/naturalized species) or is this a responsible manner to help add to the gene pool the ant keeper unavoidably altered by capturing (a) fertile queen(s): I would say releasing alates is a good practice, as long as the alates in question belong to a balanced ant species in your environment, and not a dominating/invasive ant species. The reason I think this way is because the queen that you caught could've made it to this point in the wild, so I feel giving back to the environment for capturing a queen is good practice.
By the way, when I say "dominating species", I'm referring to an ant species that IS native, but commonly gets all of the food first. A good example of this would be Solenopsis geminata in some of the southern United States. It is native, but it's usually a decisive victory for who gets the food, in a battle of Solenopsis geminata and Camponotus pennsylvanicus, per se.
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