27 replies to this topic

[OhNoNotAgain]

Re: brood rescue: I had a Tetramorium colony and I dumped long-lost siblings and brood into their outworld, and ONE worker made it her mission to retrieve all the brood, one by one, and take them into the nest. (At least I think it was just one worker.) She was systematic and thorough and single-minded and didn't stop til all the brood were collected. So I'm not sure the larvae were making any particular distress signals, though perhaps they were as I had just rudely dumped them into the outworld after a lot of shaking them out of their old home.

 

Interesting about your ants' behavior. And the human behavior is pretty interesting too, like a slave-raider giant ant supplier, or an ant addictive substance pusher, or enabler.    But seriously, fun journal!

[justanotheramy]

When I had the aphaenogaster longiceps colony in my kid's classroom last year I did a bit of googling about "kid ants", because kid humans appreciate topics being presented from a kid perspective — and read that pupae can call for help, so they do get rescued first.
The ability to produce distress calls explains how "a distinct order of rescue occurs—starting with pupae, followed by large larvae and finally by small larvae and eggs—whenever a colony is disturbed".
​Certainly explains why my orphan colony is faster to retrieve a haul of pupating brood than tiny larvae!

Were your dumpees all larvae of a similar age? Or was there a mix?

[justanotheramy]

I seem to have stolen them drone pupae — what will they do with them?

[justanotheramy]

So many drones.


Also: mould.
Everything I put in their tank goes mouldy super-fast. Long white threads on anything wet and sugary, shorter threads with little yellow balls on the tip on anything else.

Is the fungus… theirs?
The last habitat they were in had some construction in the sand, and when I was cleaning it out it didn't just collapse; there were threads holding it together that could've been this fungus?

[AntsDakota]

The drones will sit around, consuming resources, and eventually die. As will the queen alates.

Edited by AntsDakota, March 21 2020 - 6:17 AM.

[justanotheramy]

I mean… technically, this is true of the whole colony. And of us all.

[AntsDakota]

Well, the queens actually may do work around the nest like the workers, but the males aren’t capable.

[justanotheramy]

The queens are moving brood around.

I don't know that males aren't capable — wild males from nests in my backyard seem to be used as thermal regulators, they send them out into the early sun en masse after a cold night. In this colony, as it cools down they stop wandering aimlessly around the nest chamber and hunker down over the brood pile like a fidgety blanket.