For long I have felt that there are a lot of ant keepers that keep really cool species but don't leave a record of their experiences.
I will try to fill that gap by doing my part in sharing some experiences for the species I am keeping. Hope it can be of some use for the future.
I am now keeping a single queen of Stigmatomma Rubiginosum.
Since it is not my first Stigmatomma species experience, I would like to leave some references I used before that helped me to have a better understanding of this species.
First, the difference between Stigmatomma and Amblyopone species:
0 - http://www.myrmecos....ag/stigmatomma/ - " as Amblyopone has long been suspected as being an arbitrary assemblage of unrelated forms; Species are now divided between a much smaller Amblyopone and two resurrected older genera, Stigmatomma and Xymmer."
1 - http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Amblyopone - " This genus was once thought to occur in many regions of the world but a revision by Yoshimura and Fisher (2012) has shown that many species once considered Amblyopone actual belong to the genus Stigmatomma and Xymmer."
2 - https://en.wikipedia...iki/Stigmatomma - you can have a list of species under this "revised" genus, where you will find Stigmatomma Rubiginosum (with a spelling mistake)
3 - http://www.antwiki.o...mma_rubiginosum
Secondly, Alexander Wild photo references:
4 - http://www.alexander...ra/Stigmatomma/
5 - http://www.alexander...era/Amblyopone/
Finally, ant store forum references:
6 - http://www.antstore....-australis.html (not the same species, but good reference)
7 - https://www.antstore...91.html#p149291 (not the same species, but good reference)
Past experience: (not confirmed, but pointed by Benoit Guenard as possibly a Stigmatomma Rothneyi species - https://benoitguenar...i-hong-kong.jpg)
The story goes like this - I had a chinese ant keeper friend who had this weird looking ant colony which he didn't want anymore because they were too dirty and he asked me if I wanted to keep them. He didn't had any name or reference for them. Just told me this colony was wild caught in a small forest/green area in Zhuhai (China), the neighboring city of Macau (where I live), and he wasn't sure if there was a queen or not because he never saw any eggs. I accepted the offer, since the other option was to throw them into the garbage.
When I got them, the nest was simply disgusting and nasty,
Food waste and mold everywhere. Also I notice that my friend had long abandoned their keeping, the nest was dry and as soon as I added some water to the plaster nest, the ants immediately ran to the side wall to try to drink it. I ended up soaking just the right side of the nest, which by accident turned out to be great, because all the garbage that was inaccessible on the right was transferred to the left side, where I had access, I took my time with a bent stick and removed most of it. My guess was that the ants detected that humidity and garbage would create unwanted bacteria, and moved the garbage to the other side, where it was still dry.
All the ants were the same size, no difference in them whatsoever. No eggs, no larvae, no puppae. There was no sign of a queen. Also I couldn't get any confirmation if gamergates exist in Stigmatomma.
I followed my friends instruction to only feed meal worms to this species. These are the first photos of some dead workers.
I would say a month or so passed without any sign of anything happening. Then suddenly I started to notice that there was a group of ants always forming a cluster around something. That's when I noticed that there was a small ball of white stuff (eggs), I wasn't sure if they had always been there or not. Some more time passed on and one day after continuous surveillance, I saw one ant bend over a laying an egg!! I was so excited I took a photo
The layer (queen? gamergate?) is the one on the middle of the photo. That was the moment I knew I had a viable colony.
Then eggs became larvae, then puppae, and colony started to grow.
Behaviour:
The ants wouldn't respond to movement or vibration, but they would respond actively to light. I had the nest always covered with red sheet or cardboard cover
The only thing I would feed them was meal worms. Their nest had an small outworld, which they almost never used. The only time they actually came out was when i dropped a cotton ball soaked in water there. They wouldn't go out to hunt or scout the outworld. So my feeding practice was to introduce the meal worm directly into the nest. The ants would immediately attack and kill the meal worm. I have never seen a meal worm die so fast with any other species like this one. Less than 30 seconds and the worm wouldn't move anymore.
Also, the larvae were moved to the meal worm location and left to do their feeding.
I never added any soil to the nest, so puppae weaved their cocoon on their own.
End of first experience:
After maybe 5 months with this species, the experience came to an abrupt end colony found a way and escaped during my holidays.
Second experience (presently):
Now 6 months later, I managed to find a "real" queen and from a known species.
I say real queen because she is quite big and has the scars from her old wings.
The challenge here (ongoing) is to develop the colony from scratch.
The queen came in a test tube with cotton ball and water, based on some references, I decided to change the setup to this one
Left chamber (compacted soil), middle chambers (deposit food - depending on which side she would choose) , right side (same tube setup cotton ball and water). Needless to say queen went straight through to the soil.
And dug up a chamber near the top (to my delight since I can see her clearly)
I have been checking her every two days. To highlight I have her always covered. Every time i remove the cover she notices and reacts.
Finally, few days ago I noticed she was carrying an egg on her mandibles. On this photo, the egg is already on the soil.
Now I am trying to keep away, and just check her every week or so.
I also want to refer this species is Semi-Claustral, but I have deposit some food (meal worm), but she hasn't gone near it yet.
I don't expect to have more posts so soon, maybe in two weeks.
My future plans include putting her in a THA Haven, when she has more workers. The haven has a good split between nest and outworld inside the same container. This will be ideal to test the fact that they don't exit their nest to hunt.
Edited by RapaNui, November 8 2015 - 11:06 PM.