3 replies to this topic

[Telarian]

Hello Forum. I'm hoping for some help in identifying a queen I captured a few days ago. I'll try to follow the guidelines and hopefully I won't make any terrible oversights.

1. Where collected? United States Just a couple hundred yards from the Rio Grande river, near the town of Creede, in the mountains of southern Colorado at about 2626.769 m or 8618.009 feet.
    
2. Habitat of collection? Found this queen wandering on the concrete patio. So, not terribly meaningful.
    
3. Coloration, hue and pattern?  Pretty uniformly dull red and textured looking. Somewhat lighter shinier smoother looking gaster.
    
4. Distinguishing characteristics? Two segments in waist. Pretty square head. Relatively small dark wide-spread eyes out on the sides of the head. A distinctive pattern of three dots on the center top of the head.
    
5. Length in millimeters? I don't want to stress her to measure very precisely, but she is pretty well stretched out in one of the pictures. Based on that, she is 9 mm in length.
    
6. Anything else distinctive? She seems to be a fantastic climber. Far better than my other (Tetramorium) queen. She didn't cooperate very well while I was trying to photograph her, because she seemed to react pretty frantically to being taken from her nice dark storage and put under the lights of the microscope. She gets far more excited about it than the Tetramorium. She insisted on hanging from the top of the test tube. She did eventually calm down and I got some pictures before putting her away.

Sorry for the glare in the pictures. The test tube doesn't lend itself to photography.

 

Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/uHrWa

 

I'm very new to anting / ant keeping. Someone with much more expertise than I, helped me to identify my first queen as Tetramorium sp E. (Pics if you're interested: http://imgur.com/a/iIL8l).

My initial guess for this my second queen (based on my extremely feeble attempts to use internet resources) was some form of Pogonomyrmex. But he thought that didn't seem right. His best guess for this new queen was perhaps Manica, but he said that he was really unsure.

 

So, now I'm hoping someone here can help me.

Thanks for your assistance and patience with my newbness.

 

Tory Netherton

[cpman]

Seeing as she has one pair of spines on her mesosoma and does not appear to have much of an antennal club, my best guess would be Aphaenogaster. I've got no idea as to the species in Colorado, unfortunately.

Edited by cpman, June 23 2015 - 3:03 PM.

[Jonathan21700]

James Trager gave the ID for this one. Manica invidia.

Edited by Jonathan21700, June 24 2015 - 9:23 AM.

[Telarian]

Yes he did. Thank you Jonathan.