So my Myrmica obscura/schencki colony has been doing very well lately and started taking tons of different kinds of foods. I was out anting yesterday and found a bunch of Tapinoma sessile alate brood under some rocks that I figured would be a good treat for them. I offered it last night and they went nuts, dragging every single larvae down as fast as they could and I assumed they were going to be feeding them to their young, but this morning I looked in to see how much they'd have eaten and I noticed they mixed the alate brood with their own broods piles, and are grooming and tending them, even feeding them. Do they know that the larvae would die and rot so they're keeping alive as like a living larder for later use, or did they end up adopting them as their own and I can expect to see some tapinoma alates in my colony if a few weeks. I've not seen this happen before, usually my colonies shred other species larvae.
Edited by klawfran3, May 14 2017 - 8:44 AM.
