61 replies to this topic

[futurebird]

They continue to dig. Now about 30 of them are enjoying this little project. 

 

 

Back in the main nest things are pretty chill. I still can't tell if any of those piles of eggs are developing. We shall see. The splinter colony seems to have settled in, but being a much smaller colony they are clustered together and seem less at ease than their main colony. 

 

The main colony's main chamber:

 

[futurebird]

 

Intellectually I knew that Dorymyrmex bureni could dig nests 1 to 2 meters deep into the earth. A long slender vertical tunnel. (This would be like you going out in your yard and digging a tunnel just big enough for your body... a mile deep. And doing it so expertly there are no cave ins)

But seeing them really do it? Being able to watch the progress as they go deeper?

I'm so proud of them!

 

 

Watching them find the sand tube, get excited and start digging. The way the number of ants on the project swelled when it became clear that there was someplace deeper to dig to! Makes me a little emotional. They are so small but so ambitious.

It made me sad when I saw them trying to make tunnels in the shallow sand I provided in their outworld. That's what inspired the sand tube.  I could see they wanted, *needed* to dig!

 

I need to decide what I should put on the other end of the tube!

I'm thinking a small hydrated nest? Or even just a container of sand where they could make a larger chamber. 

 

This makes me want to give more ants the opportunity to "dig deep" I may try this with my Camponotus nicobarensis-- they love moving sand, and made a wonderful sandcastle about a month ago. I need to look up if they make soil nests. They don't seem to like the wooden nest as much as my other carpenters do. 

[Ernteameise]

What a cool idea!

This is really interesting.

This might actually be the first time I see someone do something like this.

[The_Gaming-gate]

I just realized that US law only prohibits the transport of queen ants across state borders. Males are not queens, so you can just go to a place where your species lives and collect males, or ask someone to send them to you. Once you do that, breed a few of them. I’m not sure if any female brood is left, so you probably can’t boost them unless you want to risk giving them workers.

Edited by The_Gaming-gate, March 30 2024 - 11:18 AM.

[futurebird]

Parthenogenesis (Thelytoky) Confirmed in Dorymyrmex Bureni!?

Their queen died due to a tragic accident. That was weeks ago. They have since produced queen alates and many eggs.  The queen alates are offspring of the dead queen. But the new eggs laid by either the workers or the new queens have matured and you know what I’m NOT seeing? Male alates!

 

That means that either the workers or the new queens have managed to produce female workers! An ant miracle… though not unheard of in some species. Just not in this genus! Did I "discover" something?

 

 

This photo was taken today. I watched as the eggs laid AFTER the queen was gone slowly matured into... well look they are workers. This colony can keep going... they just have way too many queens and I have no idea if the queens are laying the eggs since the eggs and the queens showed up at nearly the same time. (That is the queen alates eclosed at about the same time the egg piles appeared. )

 

What do you think this means?

Edited by futurebird, April 3 2024 - 4:52 PM.

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

Maybe inbreeding is what happened?

[futurebird]

There are no males. It can't be inbreeding. 

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

I heard the queen can give some sperm to workers and the workers can make more workers. I have seen this with 1 colony.

[futurebird]

The queen was killed weeks ago. I explained that. 

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

maybe she sensed she would die then give the sperm to a worker.

[Mushu]

I suspect those female workers were eggs taken out from a secret stash that was from the previous queen that was not spotted. I know I sometimes can’t spot the egg pile and it’ll randomly show up in plain site.

But you would know the exact timeline better . Very interesting none the less.

Edited by Mushu, April 4 2024 - 5:12 AM.

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

that is also true. in big colonies I sometimes can't see the egg batches sometimes.

[Kowal]

I wouldn't rule out a male being present, but remain unseen by you in colony of this size, especially if they had a hidden chamber. When one of my colonies produced a first batch of alates, there were only females - or so I thought, as two months later I finally spotted the single male they had.

Your experiment of separating some workers and alates is a neat idea since you're able to rule out existence of still unhatched eggs of original queen. But then, if you find that indeed there is some thelytoky happening, please test a group of workers separately to see whether worker laid eggs can develop into females too! 

 

I heard the queen can give some sperm to workers and the workers can make more workers. I have seen this with 1 colony.

That's a very, VERY farfetched theory, probably a result of incorrect conclusion from observations. If you've seen sperm being removed from spermatheca of a queen and placed (without use of male genitals) inside a workers spermatheca, then go publish that in Nature, they would accept it immediately if you're able to prove it, since this is unheard of. 

 

 

[The_Gaming-gate]

Somewhere back in the post I heard you were splitting female alates into different “colonies” so that they would forget the males were their brothers and mate with them. What I would do is just dip the males in vinegar since that would remove the pheromones from the male, effectively making him “colony-less.” Splitting them up won’t do much since they will be constantly interacting with other ants who have the same pheromones.


Edit: To be fair, that won’t be too necessary due to your new “gamergates.” I really have no clue how that happened, but at least the colony can live on.

Edited by The_Gaming-gate, April 6 2024 - 2:02 PM.

[futurebird]

About a third of them are digging in the tube, this is how the main nest looks today:

 

 

At this point all of the new eggs seem to be developing into workers. One of the queens has had her wings removed. Three have been killed by the workers and put in the graveyard. 

 

 

 

New eggs continue to appear in the nest. The ants sort them into little clusters and keep the larvae in little easy to carry clusters that look like little flowers. 

 

 

I wonder what is next for this colony? The splinter group, which has about 100 ants and two queens only has a few larvae and I don't know if they are doing so well. I'm inclined to reunite them and just focus on documenting how this colony has recovered from losing their queen. If I can keep raising them for another year that would show this is a mechanism for a healthy colony that loses a queen to go on!

 

I have not seen a single male. Not as a pupae not as an adult and not in any of the 100s of old photos of the colony. Here is the video of when I first got them:

 

 

There were fewer than ten of them when I started raising them and I've never seen a male. Their queen died on Feb. 13 2024 ... over fifty days ago. They raised some of the eggs laid by the dead queen into new queens, and now they are laying and raising female workers. I'm astounded and honored to witness the resilience of these little ants!

[ANTdrew]

My original Crematogaster queen was lost during a forced move out of a faulty THA Nucleus in November 2021. The colony continued producing workers, queen alates, and male alates all the way into the following summer of 2022. I got my hopes up at some points, but over time it became clear that these new ants were all from the last stash of eggs laid by the queen. Granted this is a different species entirely, but my point is that much more time will be needed to see if the colony is actually producing new ants.

[futurebird]

I would agree with you more if I'd seen any males. I know for certain that:

 

1. The nest contained no eggs only larvae a few weeks after the queen died.

2. Massive piles of eggs were laid well after the queen died.

3. None of the brood have become males.

4. There aren't just a few new female workers there are a lot, a massive batch and more on the way.

 

But, to really rule out all possibilities more time is needed so, I'll just keep feeding them and trying to keep them happy. There is a bacteria that can cause some species of ants to produce only females, and in this study of a first discovery of something similar they had to rule that out... and I don't know if I have a way to do that. 

 

https://www.research...essor_capitatus

 

When I'm more confident about what I'm seeing I'm going to email the authors of this paper to ask if they are interested in yet another genus with this unexpected ability and maybe they can help me confirm that it's what I suspect. 

Edited by futurebird, April 7 2024 - 4:27 AM.

[ANTdrew]

Good points. It will need more observation then!

[futurebird]

The cone ants have reached a depth of 25cm in their “excavation enrichment activity” (it’s a tube full of sand to satisfy their fiendish need to dig. ) In the wild their nest can be meters deep, but given the ideal nature of their current nest the digging which only a few 100 ants bother with is more of a diversion than urgently building a nest. I can inject water into the tube with a hypodermic needle. This makes them dig a little deeper? Have not figured that one out yet.

This is like the journey to the center of the earth for them. How deep can they go? The tube is only 1.5 meters long. At deeper levels I have different sand colors so I am excited to see those colors in the huge waste pile in the outworld some day.

The still refuse to store brood in this tunnel. I bet at the ant council meetings they call it "the big dig" and complain about how it's over budget and behind schedule.

In the main nest I've made new felt covers to keep the light out. I think they look nifty:

The new workers keep coming. No males or new alates since the first batch. The colony has three queens without wings, and eight that still have them. I don't know if that is significant or not.

They drink a lot of water and eat everything I give them quickly. Right now all of the larvae have a little black dot, is that because I fed them fruit flies? I also see new eggs in the main nest. Someone is still laying.

[futurebird]

Well this complicates things. There are now a few males. There are also a new batch of eggs. We shall see if it all males from here on out. (this is part of an ongoing saga about a colony that lost its queen.)

 

The presence of the males makes it hard to say if parthenogenesis that yields females or thelytoky occurred.

 

But I still think I'll write this up. I'm excited to see if these new eggs are male or female.