4 replies to this topic

[electrodynamix]

i found a bunch of queen ant like things scuttling around the house yesterday, i live in south india, in early morning hours
they are about 7mm in size

images:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/8FRLFSD

something odd is that all queens i saw have wings. I looked around the whole place to see incase they just wandered out from their colony but i didn't really find anything, however I could be wrong. Even though I caught multiple queens the images attached are of only one of them as they look pretty similar. I'm new to antkeeping and any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

[L.H]

Definitely a pheidole, but we don't have pheidole around okemos so I don't know the exact species.

Edited by L.H, May 19 2025 - 12:55 PM.

[Artisan_Ants]

Definitely a pheidole, but we don't have pheidole around okemos so I don't know the exact species.

It is indeed a female Pheidole alate. Specifically P. megacephala GROUP or P. megacephala itself (highly doubt it as this species flies in or close to August according to Antwiki. I myself have seen an alate of this queen in August in India which has similar climate all around.) There are hundreds of species of Pheidole that look very similar to P. megacephala in it’s group or not in it’s group, and without clear macro shots it would be very hard to specifically ID this alate.

[electrodynamix]

Definitely a pheidole, but we don't have pheidole around okemos so I don't know the exact species.

It is indeed a female Pheidole alate. Specifically P. megacephala GROUP or P. megacephala itself (highly doubt it as this species flies in or close to August according to Antwiki. I myself have seen an alate of this queen in August in India which has similar climate all around.) There are hundreds of species of Pheidole that look very similar to P. megacephala in it’s group or not in it’s group, and without clear macro shots it would be very hard to specifically ID this alate.

thanks for the help guys. sadly i doubt i can get better images as the camera blurs out if i get it closer or zoom more to the ant

Edited by electrodynamix, May 20 2025 - 7:14 AM.

[Artisan_Ants]

 

 

Definitely a pheidole, but we don't have pheidole around okemos so I don't know the exact species.

It is indeed a female Pheidole alate. Specifically P. megacephala GROUP or P. megacephala itself (highly doubt it as this species flies in or close to August according to Antwiki. I myself have seen an alate of this queen in August in India which has similar climate all around.) There are hundreds of species of Pheidole that look very similar to P. megacephala in it’s group or not in it’s group, and without clear macro shots it would be very hard to specifically ID this alate.

thanks for the help guys. sadly i doubt i can get better images as the camera blurs out if i get it closer or zoom more to the ant

 

It's fine. Even if we had the pics, we would have to sort through the differences between similar Pheidole species which would take hours.