17 replies to this topic

[CheetoLord02]

Certainly an unexpected journal, but a seriously exciting one nonetheless. 

While I was anting today near Aztec Peak, I was flipping rocks as per usual when I stumbled across a sight I never thought I'd find. The area had a relatively high density of Formica species, and I had actually been joking about the lack of parasites, such as parasitic Formica or Polyergus.

Well, one fairly large rock later, and I notice something that I was immediately able to understand. In the midst of a ton of angry Formica gnava workers, I noticed a single large, bright orange individual sitting in the dead center of the rock. If it wasn't obvious already, that orange ant was a Polyergus queen. In the field I had assumed her to be P. mexicanus, however F. gnava is not a known host species of P. mexicanus, and instead is one of only a few known hosts of P. topoffi. I'm relatively confident in coming to an ID consensus this way, however I will also be sure to key out a biological worker once I get enough.

Speaking of biological workers, this colony has none. It seems like this is a brand new queen who has just infiltrated a colony for the first time. This is awesome, as I'll get to have the experience of raising Polyergus to their first biological workers.

The queen is also substantially larger than I ever expected. I haven't measured her, but this image is a 20mm test tube. Seriously a monster compared to any Formica queen I've seen.
 

 

 

I managed to collect as many of the host workers as possible by shoveling up the soil they were nesting in and putting them in a large ziploc bag. I have since dumped them into a bin with a barrier, and hooked that up to a Tarheel Ants Fortress. I had kept the Polyergus queen separate (with 5 host workers) to make sure she wouldn't be injured in transport, and placed her and the few hosts into the formicarium. Unfortunately when the ants in the bin found the ones in the formicarium, and instead of moving in, they dragged the queen and the workers back into the dirt bin. I'm hoping that they'll be smart enough to go back to the formicarium when the dirt dries out, otherwise I don't know what I'll do.

Another unfortunate thing is that while I have a claustral Formica colony, that species (F. podzolica) is not a known host of Polyergus topoffi. I know where to collect Formica gnava brood/colonies, however anybody who's experienced that species knows that they are quite the formidable opponent. Their formic acid is extremely potent, and larger colonies can create a cloud of gas around their nest that is impossible to breathe in. Stealing brood or collecting colonies of them is going to be quite the wild ride, but I think it'll end up being worth it for the Polyergus.

Edited by CheetoLord02, August 23 2021 - 9:07 PM.

[yibsi]

I've found a polyrgus queen before, I found her while I was out looking for Formica queens. I introduced her to some cocoons/developing workers, and eventually they hatched and she accepted them, never layed eggs though and eventually died, I've heard from others that they are a pretty hard species to keep in captivity, especially considering they constantly need a new stream of Formica workers, not just until the queen lays eggs like a parasitic species. With that being said, I wish you luck and look forward to a journal on these pretty gals, love their sickle like mandibles!

[CheetoLord02]

By slowly removing dirt from the bin and just generally messing with the colony, I got them to move into the Fortress. I actually uncovered the Polyergus queen manually, and dropped her (gently) into the Fortress outworld to get the move over with quicker. I took a quick video, so here's that:




She's also no longer physogastric, although I'm hoping a healthy feeding will change that. I was also fairly surprised to see that there's a decent number of larvae, at least 30, and those should all be Polyergus topoffi. This means I should be expecting my first generation of Polyergus workers pretty soon, which is really exciting. Now all I need to do is figure out how I'm going to get more host brood for them, but hopefully that won't be an issue for at least a few more months.

[CheetoLord02]

Since the last update, the colony has settled very nicely into their formicarium.
 

 

 

The Polyergus larvae that I collected with the colony are also starting to pupate! I wasn't sure when this would happen since while the larvae were quite large, I'm not exactly sure how large I expect the first generation of Polyergus workers to be. By the looks of it they definitely won't be super small, so that's pretty exciting. The queen also doesn't seem to be bothered much by the move, and has laid a considerable amount of eggs.
 

 

 

I'm going to be going out on Saturday to try and collect a F. gnava colony. If I can raise a colony in captivity, especially a polygynous colony, it should make getting brood for the Polyergus to raid much easier. If I can get a headstart with the brood production that should be great, since due to the number of hosts I don't think the Polyergus will need to raid for quite a while still.

Edited by CheetoLord02, May 20 2021 - 10:51 AM.

[azzaaazzzz00]

Good for you, for some reason whenever I move ANY of my colonies, they go beserk. And then for the next few days the queen is just not gonna have it. *sigh*

[CheetoLord02]

An unexpected update, a buddy in AZ posted an ID request, and to my surprise it was Polyergus mexicanus! I informed him of everything to do with them, and understandably he didn't want to undertake the responsibility of keeping them and providing brood for them to raid. Now typically I wouldn't have accepted yet another Polyergus colony, however P. mexicanus and P. topoffi have no hosts in common with each other, so I won't need to worry about balancing raiding brood between the two colonies. In addition, I have colonies of both F. podzolica and F. subanaescens, both of which are hosts for P. mexicanus.

The colony is quite small, at only 5 Polyergus workers and 7 slaves. I figured these small numbers were probably less than ideal, so I decided to go ahead and let them raid as soon as I got them moved in to a setup.
 

 

 

Once I got them settled into one of my Formisquarium nests, I hooked up a custom outworld with a 2nd entrance and attached a tube with a good number of F. subanaescens pupae. 
 

 

 

One of the workers from the "prey colony" actually wandered into the Polyergus' nest, which needless to say made them pretty on-edge. One Polyergus worker found the tube with the brood and went crazy, spazzing out inside the tube and attacking pupae, workers, and even the dead Trachymyrmex queen alate that I had fed to the Formica before and accidentally got scooped up with the pupae when I collected them. Anyways, the Polyergus worker ran home and the Formica evacuated the tube. From there, 2-3 of the 5 Polyergus workers began attacking Formica workers, while the slaves were the ones to actually come out and start grabbing the pupae.

By the end of it, all the pupae were safely transferred to the Polyergus colony.
 

One interesting thing too is that the Polyergus mexicanus queen is substantially smaller than the P. topoffi queen. She's around 7-8mm, while the topoffi queen is probably around 12-13mm. 

Speaking of the topoffi queen, all of the larvae they were collected with have pupated, and they are in fact Polyergus pupae. A few of them did not spin cocoons, and I was able to see their mandibles. I also collected a large amount of F. gnava pupae that I hoped to keep until the workers eclose, however the workers I collected with the pupae ended up gassing themselves and dying, so I just gave the pupae to the colony now. The hosts eagerly collected them and now there's a good amount of pupae.

I can easily tell which cocoons are Polyergus, as they are substantially larger than the F. gnava pupae. I assume the huge size of the queen will transfer into the workers as well, which is super awesome.

I also got some really cool pics of the queen.
 

 

[CheetoLord02]

Polyergus mexicanus

For whatever reason the F. podzolica brood that I had offered before died while I was away.... along with the F. podzolica colony. I have no idea why, they were probably cursed or something.

Anyways, I decided to go ahead and offer a large number of F. neogagates-group brood that I had collected. To my surprise, despite being a completely different species group from the current host workers, the brood was all accepted very easily.
 

 

Polyergus topoffi
 

My P. topoffi colony also got biological workers while I was gone! I count between 8 and 10, and there's still more Polyergus pupae to eclose. They're substantially larger than the P. mexicanus workers, as expected. I also saw two different P. topoffi colonies while I was in the Chiricahua mountains, and one colony was even doing a raid! I followed their raiding trail back to their nest and found out later it was almost 400 feet away from the colony they were raiding! Just made me even more excited to see them in action.
 

[NicholasP]

To be honest I prefer Polyergus Mexicanus over Topoffi. They're small little ants and in my opinion are cuter.

[CheetoLord02]

Good and bad update. I'll start with the bad; the P. mexicanus ended up dying. It really seemed like a series of bad events. As of last update I had given the colony some F. lasioides pupae, however as the hosts were from a different species group, they would kill the new workers as soon as they eclosed. My solution was to get rid of all surviving workers and attempt to re-introduce new neogagates-group hosts, as I had no more fusca-group brood to offer. It seemed to work, however after a few days the new hosts ended up dying as well for an unknown reason. I introduced yet more hosts, which worked again, but 2 days later the Polyergus queen died. I definitely tried to save the colony, but when all I was given was 7 slaves and 5 bios the chances of survival were pretty low.

Still, I'm not all that sad, as my P. topoffi were absolutely the preferred colony/species, and they're doing amazing. All of the biological workers have eclosed and fully hardened now, and the queen has been pumping out eggs like crazy.
 

 

 

I also caught a Formica gnava queen! While one brand new queen is certainly not going to produce enough brood to fulfill this colony, it's better than nothing. I also hope to catch F. foreliana this year, which is the other host species for P. topoffi. I'm not sure when I'll need to provide brood for this colony, but so far they haven't shown signs of wanting to raid yet.

[ReignofRage]

P. topoffi eggs! 

Edited by ReignofRage, June 20 2021 - 8:50 PM.

[ZTYguy]

Yeah! Love the journal can’t wait for a nice big P. Topoffi colony. All I have to say is this https://www.google.c...0YYMHeBZuc7SOmz

[CheetoLord02]

The 2nd generation of Polyergus workers has started to eclose, and boy are there a lot of them. 
 

 

 

There'll probably be at least 100 biological workers after this, which means it'll be time for the colony to start raiding. I need to get a proper setup for doing so, and of course brood for them to actually raid. Until then this colony is fairly simple to care for, it's essentially like any other Formica colony just with the need to raid a few times a year.

Edited by CheetoLord02, August 4 2021 - 10:42 AM.

[CheetoLord02]

I'm gonna need a new nest... Our 2nd generation of biological workers has basically finished eclosing... and there's a LOT of them.
 

 

 

Not only do I need a new nest, but I need to get them some brood to raid! There's been Polyergus workers hanging out in the outworld just waiting for the opportunity almost every day. I had gathered a lot of F. foreliana brood before the 2nd gen eclosed, but all the Formica pupae eclosed before the Polyergus were ready to raid, which sucked.
 

 

 

I also noticed something extremely interesting, that being a queen alate pupa? I have absolutely no idea why a queen alate was produced, considering the colony is absolutely nowhere near their maximum size. Still, I wonder if this makes me the world record holder for the fastest time from first workers to queen alate. Once she ecloses it'll probably be 2.5 months total, from the first Polyergus workers to her eclosing.

 

[CheetoLord02]

A few days ago I moved this colony into a Labyrinth. 
 

 

 

Around that point I realized that I was gonna need some brood for these gals to raid, and preferably quick. Thankfully I knew pretty much exactly how and where to do it. I took a trip up to Payson, AZ with a friend, since he was looking for Dynastes grantii (hercules beetles). We did find several of them, and that night identified a number of F. gnava colonies in the area. The next morning when it was warm, we went out rock flipping to see if we could find some with pupae warming up under a rock.

Needless to say we were successful; I found an absolutely massive colony under a rock with hundreds, if not over a thousand pupae. I quickly got my shovel out and scooped up a large portion of it into a large ziploc bag.

Next, I needed to make a proper raid setup. Unfortunately with Polyergus it's not as easy as just dumping brood in their outworld. They need some distance between them and the prey colony in order to form a proper raid column. If you were to just dump pupae in the outworld, the Polyergus would not recognize it as a host nest and the host workers would end up being the ones to bring the brood into the nest. 

On my way back from Payson I stopped at Target and picked up a long bin for like 5 dollars, and lined it with fluon. I dumped out my brood bag into it and placed a container lid on one end, to serve as the new nest for the prey colony.
 

They did get the idea as the exposed dirt dried out, and overnight all moved into the chamber.
 

Once everything looked good, I attached the Polyergus' nest to the other end of the setup via tubing, and basically just let them figure it out. It took quite a while for anything to really happen, but once it happened it happened.

Here's some footage of everything going down. As soon as the Polyergus began infiltrating the prey nest, the prey workers panicked, grabbing as many pupae as possible and evacuating; the exact same behavior I observed from the prey colony in the wild raid I had seen a few months ago.


 

There was so much brood that the Polyergus had to make several trips back and forth just to get it all. I honestly got a worrying amount of brood for them. It's absurd. The queen is going to start laying like crazy. P. topoffi colonies seem to get massive, and I think this amount of hosts will only kickstart their growth even more. They raided so many pupae it wouldn't even fit in the nest! I just moved them a few days ago and they're already out of space...

 

I did attach a Formisquarium XL to their nest as additional nesting space, but they aren't using it yet. I think I just overhydrated it and they're waiting for it to dry out.

[smares]

That growth rate is crazy! I can't help but feel bad for the host workers, they can't even run away I know it's natural.

[NicholasP]

Update?

[Chasicle]

What a sick species. Excited for the next update!

[BDantsalberta]

Update pls?