5 replies to this topic

[Shrike311]

I have a Pogonomyrmex occidentalis colony.  The colony has about 25 workers now.  It is in a test tube connected via about 1.5 feet of tubing into a large outworld.

 

I've had the colony since July of 2024 without diapausing them.  The colony just doesn't seem to grow because the workers start to seemingly randomly kill/attack other workers.  The worst I've seen is that one worker clamps onto the neck joint of the victim ant and another worker clamp onto the gaster joint of the same victim ant and pull in opposite directions for like 30 minutes before I had to leave.  

 

I haven't seen the ants actually deliver the killing blow, but I find dismembered bodies in the trash pile frequently.  The victim ants never fights back.  The aggressor ants seem to pick a victim and then bully the victim without reprieve. 

 

It's weird behavior, none of my other ant colonies seem to do anything remotely like this.

 

The kills SEEM to go in spurts over the last 5 months that I've noticed it.  Ie there will be 2-4 killings over a week, then nothing for a week or two.  But that could partially just be my imagination.

 

Right now there is an ant that has been clamped onto the leg of another ant for about 45 minutes.  It isn't pulling the victim any anywhere, it's just clamped on an holding.  In fact the victim ant has been trying to pull the aggressor ant around.

 

Does any one have any idea what could be going on?

 

Do I have a mutant colony or am I doing something wrong?

[OwlThatLikesAnts]

Maybe the workers that are getting killed have diseases or something else that's wrong and the other workers are just making sure that the disease does not spread around, or that the workers that are getting killed are defective in a way.

[ANTdrew]

I think a lot of commercial Pogonomyrmex colonies are brood boosted, at least they were in the past. Perhaps you have some different lineages turning on each other.

[Shrike311]

I think a lot of commercial Pogonomyrmex colonies are brood boosted, at least they were in the past. Perhaps you have some different lineages turning on each other.

 

Interesting theory.  So you're saying the original brood boosted workers (from a different queen) might still be alive and randomly killing newer ants hatched from my current queen?  What is the average lifespan of a Pogonomyrmex occidentalis worker?  I've had the colony for about 11 months.

[RushmoreAnts]

 

I think a lot of commercial Pogonomyrmex colonies are brood boosted, at least they were in the past. Perhaps you have some different lineages turning on each other.

 

Interesting theory.  So you're saying the original brood boosted workers (from a different queen) might still be alive and randomly killing newer ants hatched from my current queen?  What is the average lifespan of a Pogonomyrmex occidentalis worker?  I've had the colony for about 11 months.

 

If you had the colony for 11 months, there are definitely still original workers around. Large workers like that can (definitely not all do) live well over a year, if not 2 or 3 in some rarer cases. If you have several workers in a generation, I would bet money that several of them survive to over a year. My Tetra colony was founded almost a year ago, and I believe there are still a couple nanitics somewhere in that mass of 2 thousand, as they are significantly smaller than the new ones.

[AntsGodzilla]

This is an intresting post, I felt like this was a part of a story. ANTdrew has given a good explanation, but this could also be due to stress; do your ants have enough food, do they live in an invironment that suits them? I have had situations in the past simular to this, (I don't know why I did this) but once I fed my Pogonomyrmex colony a bug from my house, and after they killed it, they went crazy and attacked each other, possibly for many reasons. For now you should give the ants the most tranquil environment you can.

Edited by AntsGodzilla, May 26 2025 - 9:22 PM.