9 replies to this topic

[Vendayn]

I got a Monomorium ergatogyna colony (11-08-15) that made its home in one of the plant pots on our porch. They were gonna be sprayed with poison, since mom doesn't want ants on our porch or in her plants.

 

The colony has over 10,000 workers, and dozens of queens (probably over 50). Its a pretty large colony, and M. ergatogyna colonies can be huge. I saw one that took literally 5 minutes to walk from one end of their colony range to the other, and that doesn't include the entire hillside they had occupied. They are only native ant I've personally seen that can beat and take over Argentine ant nests. Anywhere this species is, are no Argentine ants at all or much less of them. They can even beat Solenopsis invicta without any issue at all.

 

Keeping them is pretty easy, however, they are amazing escape artists. They are really small, love to climb (they'll readily climb on your hand and "stick" to it) and escape anyway they can. I found that not even fluon worked that well for them, on a straight sided plastic aquarium. Might be how I applied it, but fluon worked for my other ants and I applied it the same. In any case, I found actually olive oil or grape seed oil (or any other cooking oil) works the best for this species. I apply it very thick where it drips into the dirt, and it lasts for many months without needing to be re-applied. The trick is a thick layer of it. Except, workers try to cross it and get stuck on it and drown in oil. This only lasts for the initial few days though, and they eventually learn not to cross it.

 

Besides them being so annoying to stop escaping, they are a very fun species to keep. They eat everything, very easy to care for (if ignoring them being amazing escape artists, probably the best escape artists of any native species) and their colonies grow really big. They make colonies with many queens all spread out in one big huge ant empire.

 

I also put some moss into their setup, which I've had good success with growing (thus far) in my Pheidole megacephala colony. I find it easy to grow, except if I kept a dry climate ant, it probably be too hard as moss needs it pretty wet and humid.

Edited by Vendayn, September 17 2016 - 9:06 PM.

[Mdrogun]

do you have any pictures of their setup?

[Vendayn]

Not at the moment, I'll take a couple/few when I get a chance.

[Vendayn]

I'll take more of the setup, but here is one of the tube (its 10 inches long, about diameter of a nickel and completely black inside with ants). I have a test tube as well that is quickly becoming completely black with ants

 

Here is first one, not as good as the one below.

 

 

 

 

I used too much light when taking the picture, so the others didn't come out as good.

 

They are also nesting in a rotten piece of wood I put in there as well, so they have a lot of places they can choose.

 

But, this colony is actually more in the tens of thousands of workers, maybe even up to a hundred thousand. Its huge, but hard to estimate how many exactly because of how small they are. But, must be a lot for about a ten inch length of tubing with the width of a nickel to be completely black with ants.

Edited by Vendayn, November 8 2015 - 8:05 PM.

[Vendayn]

added a third picture, and you can sort of see the ants (there are so many of them, even my lame phone camera does okay at taking their pictures lol. And I think maybe black ants are easier for my phone to take pictures of for some reason, not red or lighter colored ants)

[Crystals]

They are sure tiny.  If one or twenty made it onto the floor, I do not see how you could see them when standing. 

[Vendayn]

They are pretty hard to see from afar. Really only noticeable because of how huge their colonies are. Otherwise if they had tiny colonies and their size being only a bit bigger than Solenopsis molesta, would probably barely ever notice them lol. Monomorium ergatogyna even have tiny queens compared to other ant queens; I think about the size of Solenopsis molesta queens. Each one probably doesn't lay very many eggs either (don't see how with their tiny size), they just have a ton of them to produce brood.

[Vendayn]

I put the fluon stuff on and it worked perfectly.

 

Really weird. Same container (and I washed it out before hand with water, soap and some bleach like usual) and cooking oil didn't work, but fluon did. But, last time fluon didn't work and cooking oil worked great on them. It must be related to the weather. When it was really hot and dry, the cooking oil worked great. Now that its colder and more humid, it seems fluon does the better job.

 

Anyone notice anything like that with ant barriers that different ones work better at different times of year? Or is this just a coincidence somehow and other factors are in play?

[Vendayn]

Three days ago I put a big piece of raw chicken for them to eat, and they've been chowing down on it for an entire three days now. Just today they've tunneled into it into the middle part, but is sure fun to watch them slowly eat away at it. At one point there must have been hundreds of ants eating it all at once. That is a lot of food for them too! That should give a nice boost to brood production.

I also gave them fresh honey, but they haven't gone after that as much. They've mostly been into protein foods.

[Vendayn]

This is an amazing species for something so tiny, readily mating in captivity. Huge colonies, and a huge range of diet.

 

I however very likely won't be keeping them again, nor am I likely to keep other similar sized ants. They escape way too easily. With one exception. If the Tarheel pinnacle is 100% escape proof even for ants that are tiny, I actually plan to try to get a colony of them. Otherwise I'll use the Tarheel formicarium for my Pogonomyrmex rugosus.

 

In any case, this journal is pretty much over. And I probably won't even use them for the Tarheel setup, they just escape too easily since they are so small. Best escape artists of any ant (better than Solenopsis molesta and invicta). Makes them too hard to keep.