3 replies to this topic

[Crazycow]

So I’ve been keeping a colony of Myrmica Sp for about 6 months now, they started out as a 11 queen colony as I thought they were polygynous. When I found them they were grouped in the dozens so I collected a good amount and called it good. Now 6 months later they are sitting at about 50-75 workers but what I’ve noticed it the worker size greatly varies with some very very tiny minor casts and some quite larger almost queen size major casts or at least I think. Does anyone else have anymore info on these ants? I’m from Wenatchee Washington and they were collected locally.


Here is a picture of what I mean.


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[cooIboyJ]

From the looks of it it seems that the ants have majors and minors, and if not that then just different sized workers like Veromessor pergandei. Either this or you have some leftover nanitics, or your ants are varying how much they feed their larvae for hibernation/diapause.

[bmb1bee]

Myrmica don't seem to be polygynous, the size variation is just likely due to nanitics remaining. This difference in size occurs in a lot of ants, where worker size increases as the colony's population grows. Eventually they should all reach a similar size once full-sized workers are produced.

[rptraut]

Hello Crazycow;

Have you noticed that each queen resides in a separate location with her attendant workers? In my Myrmica colonies, each queen has attendants, some have a few, some have many. Differences in queens, the number of attendants, the amount of food the larvae receive and the stress and inconsistency from moving the colony may all be contributing factors to the size difference in workers.

Also, don’t be too surprised if unproductive or worn out queens are culled from the colony by workers this fall. This happens often in my colonies.
RPT