13 replies to this topic

[Waganga]

Saw mentions of nest activity on the Colorado Anting thread, so I was motivated to get up a little early and see what was around the house. Caught a three queens! I think they're both the same, as best I can tell.

 

Location: Urban back yard, Northglenn, Colorado, USA

Date: 6/5/18

Time: Between 7am and 8am; again at 9:30am

Length: Apx 6-7mm

Coloration: Dark brown all over, with slightly lighter stripes on gaster, and slightly lighter leg parts; lots of hairs, very velvety looking.

Characteristics: 8 to 10 antennae segments? (Hard to tell); Two petiole nodes on waist, two small spikes on the backside of the thorax.

Behavior: Very active; one of them was pretty dumb at pathfinding and easy to catch, the other two were stubborn about walking into the test tube. 

 

Click here for all the pictures

 

Best possible pictures:

 

I don't even have a species guess on these, I just haven't had the time to figure out what species lives in the sidewalk cracks. I think they're just very common black pavement ants/black sugar ants/sidewalk ants/whatever you call them where you live. I'd like to know if they're polygynous before I set up their test tubes, because if I can put them together, I think that would be fun. Also, I'd like to know the genus/species asap so I know about how fast they're going to grow. 

Edited by Waganga, June 5 2018 - 8:04 AM.

[sgheaton]

Yup, you win!

 

There has been some threads going about the whole polygynous debate for tetramorium, but they were mostly to confirm what was already known -- give these queens individual set ups. 

[LIFEsize]

Adding to this, I do not recommend trying to combine tetramorium. I put 3 together a month ago and when I checked on them 2 weeks later all dead. 😢

[Waganga]

Woohoo! Yeah, after I zeroed in on tetramorium and saw the AntsCanada videos of them, I was pretty sure. 

 

They've all got individual test tubes now. They seem to fall down/roll over a lot when trying to climb the sides. I'm wondering, would they appreciate a small amount of substrate (baked native soil)? It looks like they grow into really large colonies! I'm wondering how much nest space I should plan for them? Perhaps I should put them in a good old dirt box? Also, would they do OK sitting out on a table/in the light? I've been trying to give my Camponotus queens lots of privacy, because I know they grow pretty slowly, but I am really curious to see the initial founding stages in action. 

[sgheaton]

So..... I'm only basing this on the three years I've been doing this...

 

You'll have absolutely no problem finding a Tetramorium in Colorado. Their flight time is a couple of months. I've raised them in test tubes, cups, and bead boxes. They have laid eggs across all three "set ups." My journal goes back showing the different set ups. My story is unique in that I forgot about a lot of my ants and went back to the colony I had forgotten about...

 

How many queens do you have? 3? Put one in just dirt - watch what happens. Put another one with a tsp of dirt. Third one gets the cleaned set up. 

 

You will find more of this queen this year. 

Edited by sgheaton, June 5 2018 - 9:08 AM.

[T.C.]

I combined several, and had all get killed but one. However because of all the other queens brood,  it became quite a large colony.

[sgheaton]

Don't you remember the whole gladiator discussion from way back when?!? Anters look down on the games!! Shush with that propaganda talk!

[GeorgeK]

I wouldn't combine them either. Today ( atleast in Serbia ) twas hard to walk and not crush a tetra queen. I took only 3 of them and put every one of them into single set ups. Last year i tried combining solenopsis fugax queens ( which are known to that even mature colonies accept new queens ) and put them in pairs of 2, 3 and 4. In the end in each set up only 1 queen was left with many more decapitated. Bad experience if you ask me

[smares]

sgheaton I am interested in your experiment results. Can you link your journal? I didn't see it when I searched.

[sgheaton]

http://www.formicult...18/?hl=colorado

[Waganga]

Oh snap, it seems like the polygyne thing is controversial! Having a gladiator battle to the death sounds pretty disheartening from my perspective, so I'll probably skip on that!

 

I watched them for about a day and saw that they were either napping in the middle of the tube, or wearing themselves out by pulling at the cotton. I ended up adding some sterile native soil to each of their tubes, and it seems to have calmed all of them down. They've all nested a little bit and started laying eggs actively! 

 

 

I wouldn't mind catching a few more of these ladies, just because it seems like they develop extremely quickly, and I'm a somewhat impatient potato. I have a small formicarium from Ant-Topia I'd like to try out, and I am trying my hand at building a few formicariums from ceramic. It would be nice to have some established colonies to try on these ceramic prototypes sooner rather than later. 

[sgheaton]

That was the main topic, Waganga. Ethics and morals. Personification and anthropomorphism. Always sparks the, "How do you kill your ants?!" debate... Just best to do whatever you do ^^

 

Time to start a journal! You're well on your way seeing eggs so you've passed the first challenge! (Is she fertile or not)

 

Depending on where you live in Colorado, there's a company that sells (pick up only) a ridiculously big bag of hydrostone for $20. Its like, 5lb or something. I forget. 

 

And that Link I provided sent to somewhere else... Try the one below, sorry about that!

http://www.formicult...18/?hl=colorado

[GeorgeK]

Somewhat closed thread, but still i'd like to mention my todays observation. After noticing that formica rufibarbis had flown, i went searching and stone turning, When i turned one rock, below i found two tetra queens next to eachother, having single stack of eggs, so it seems that sometimes that happens in wild. I also found few more tetra queens below rocks but they all were alone.

[Waganga]

Somewhat closed thread, but still i'd like to mention my todays observation. After noticing that formica rufibarbis had flown, i went searching and stone turning, When i turned one rock, below i found two tetra queens next to eachother, having single stack of eggs, so it seems that sometimes that happens in wild. I also found few more tetra queens below rocks but they all were alone.

 

Yeah - from what I've gathered, if put together, Tetramorium queens will initially get along. However, it seems like as the overall colony grows, one queen is eventually dubbed a "keeper" and the rest are generally killed by the colony itself. I guess they're too expensive to keep alive?