This coming ant season, my personal goal is to collect a colony large california pheidole.
Before collecting, I feel that I've done some research on pheidole hyatti and I notice that many colonies would explode and then suddenly collapse. Judging by what I have observed in the wild as well as some research I believe that I may have a hypothesis of why this is the case. If some of my facts are wrong, please let me know as I have never kept a colony of them so there will surely be those who know more than me on here.
From observing hyatti in the wild, I notice that the ant colonies aren't particularly big and always seem to be in close but not too close proximity to other hyatti colonies. Maybe it could be that I was busy so I haven't really been seriously searching, but for the past 2 years, I've never seen any hyatti flights but I have seen flights of other ants. From this, I suppose that either hyatti flights are rather short and they land just far enough from the nest to not be a threat or they perform colony budding. Both theories can be supported by the fact that hyatti is polygynous so the risk of inbreeding is relatively low and the risk of danger is also relatively low in friendly territory.
The fact that hyatti is polygynous also makes it that queens are more disposable so they are more fragile than monogyne queens. After reading a paper on Myrmica Tahoensis, it seems that polygyne queens have low lifespans and colonies tend to rely on new queens coming in. Therefore, I believe that pheidole hyatti queens may not live long under natural situations and their explosive captive growth may put a strain on them that shortens their already short lifespan. To combat this, I would try less frequent feedings and introductions of new queens yearly. Again, there isn't much information for me to look at so I'm not too sure how valid this hypothesis is.
https://www.research...rmica_tahoensis
