This journal is going to be covering my "Thief ant" Solenopsis spp. Primary focus will be on my Solenopsis krockowi and Solenopsis cf. ocellata, although I do also have a Solenopsis carolinensis colony that may be featured in here at some point. The other two species are significantly more interesting though, so they will be the starts of the show.

Solenopsis krockowi

This species is the largest thief ant in the US, if not largest in North America. I haven't really looked outside of the US to confirm or deny that. My queen is a bit on the smaller size for this species, coming in at just under 7mm. She is also missing an antenna, since I caught her in a spider web she must have lost it there. I originally started with 2 queens, an alate and a dealate, but around halfway through founding the alate died. I do imagine this species is most likely monogynous, and I'm glad that the dealate is the one to have survived. They just got nanitics recently, and as of now have close to 10 or so workers.
 

Solenopsis cf. ocellata

Completely opposite of S. krockowi, this is one of the smallest ants in North America. They are part of the Solenopsis pygmea species group, and are incredibly rare. S. ocellata has only been collected 3 times, once in Arizona and twice in Louisiana. The reason for the cf. is that this could also theoretically be S. whitfordi or S. pulleni, both of which are only documented in New Mexico. I really have no way to ID these confidently at this time, so I'll be sticking to the species that's documented in my state for my educated guess. Most pics of these are going to be absolutely terrible due to the fact that they are so small, with the queens being around 3mm and their nanitic being less than 1. Supposedly the workers can get up to 1.4mm, but that's really nothing to write home about. Either way, I really wanted to get the documentation of this colony out there due to the fact that they are so rarely collected, and I believe these are the only images of a queen of this species out there.
 

Edited by CheetoLord02, October 22 2020 - 5:33 AM.

wish we had more than molesta around here. I have kept molesta before, though.

Very excited to see how the Solenopsis cf. ocellata do considering how rare they are.

Finally, accurate thief ant ID    Looking good, beautiful species.

I have a cf. truncorum queen that is the same size as your ocellata, but, almost jet black.

Quick update here, and really not that good! Terrible news, even!

Solenopsis krockowi:

After a nice big feeding last night, the colony's ever-growing larva pile was craving food. So naturally, instead of eating the fresh mealworm they had, they killed and ate their own queen.

I'm not even kidding.

Solenopsis ocellata:

This colony's actually not doing too bad. The winged queen died, meaning there's a chance this species is pleometrophic. They ended up getting a whole 2 nanitics, one of which has since died. However, the remaining queen and one worker are doing just fine, with a nice big larva and a considerable pile of eggs. Thankfully this colony actually ate the food I offered them and not their own queen!

Myrmecines have never been the smartest it seems....

As of last week or so the S. ocellata queen randomly dropped dead. While unfortunate, I'm not hugely disappointed as it's likely these guys have some care necessity that there is no way I could have figured out on the first attempt. Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea where the worker's dead body ended up, so while I will be sending the queens into AntWeb to be imaged, getting a positive ID on whether or not they are truly S. ocellata or not is probably going to be impossible.

Nooo! RIP