7 replies to this topic

[ponerinecat]

Is this gonna last? Found a wild colony and caught them. Xyloni here always seem to be poly, I've seen multi queen colonies before, one with at least 4-5 queens.

[Manitobant]

Probably a small colony. Xyloni aren't fully polygynous to my knowledge, though I would keep a close eye on them and see if anything happens.

[AnthonyP163]

Solenopsis xyloni can and will be polygynous in some cases. I have another friend with a multi-queen colony and I have read a study that says they have been found with multiple queens in the nest, I believe the most found in one colony is 7 queens, I might be wrong.

[ANTdrew]

Are you keeping ants again?

[ponerinecat]

Are you keeping ants again?

Kinda. Keeping it small for now.

[ANTdrew]

Right on

[CheetoLord02]

Hey, I actually have this same thing, but it's with the Arizona black variant of xyloni. 2 queens. The colony is really small right now, they used to have like 200 workers but the nest I moved them into was contaminated with something that killed about 90% of the workers. They're nearly back on their feet now though with a decent pile of brood. Either way, polygynous xyloni are a tough subject. At least with the Arizona black variant there seems to be a macrogene and microgene variant, as I've caught queens that are 7.5-8mm and would fight right after flying, definitely monogynous. However these queens are physically much smaller, only around 6-6.5mm and are polygynous. Just something I've observed.

[RushmoreAnts]

 black variant of xyloni.

I love that about Solenopsis. Some of the queens in my S. molesta colony are black with traces of red, while most of them are golden, some with touches of brown.