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[bmb1bee]

It turns out that I may have collected the first known specimen of a Lasius atopus queen, or at least something similar. From what I’ve read, these ants were first described from Mendocino County and had only been known from workers. Gynes hadn’t been known until a few iNaturalist observations of a strange looking Lasius queen popped up by a lake about half an hour from me. At first I wasn’t interested in them too much, I was eventually motivated by the recent IDs posted on those observations and by some people I knew to look for them. I came around the same time of day as the observations, but found nothing. I was about to come home empty handed when I found a parking area with some rocks, which I decided to check out. One particularly flat rock yielded a juvenile black widow, probably Latrodectus hesperus, that had trapped and killed a few ants. One of the victims was a yellow Lasius queen, which I’d decided was likely the target I was looking for. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any others, dead or alive, in the surrounding area. I’m still happy to have made such a discovery and will definitely try to contribute to the research of this California endemic (if this is even truly Lasius atopus), which we still know very little about. I have someone I’ll be sending the specimen to, and he will likely post updates on what he finds. You can find my iNaturalist post here for more pictures.

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Edited by bmb1bee, August 12 2025 - 1:35 PM.