Hello, I'm completely new to the world of ants (both ID and keeping them as pets), so I think I'll be able to learn a lot from the forums. Since moving to south Texas last year I've been collecting a good number of ants on my collecting trips, but haven't really gotten around to IDing them yet. I have to ID ants on occasion for work too, so I've been trying to expand my knowledge of them as best I can. Since I've been learning all that, I've gotten interested in potentially keeping some as pets as well. I already keep a huge variety of invert pets, but I've never tried ants. I used to look at them as pests more than anything, since I would be out collecting insects and flip a log or rock to find an ant colony that had cleaned everything out, but I've come to realize they're much more interesting than what I originally thought.
I'm about as new as they come when it comes to keeping, so I'm looking forward to poking around and maybe getting some good starter species. Since it has been raining a lot here recently I've been seeing plenty of alates. When I was out blacklighting a couple weeks ago they were on the sheet by the thousand, basically burying all the other insects we were out to collect. I've seen the occasional Neoponera villosa, which might be interesting to keep, along with Pseudomyrmex gracilis. Both seem to be higher end though, so likely not good starters for me. I believe my old university had N. villosa, but I don't think the colony did very well. I couldn't say why they had issues though, I only vaguely remember the way they were keeping them.