I have a few ant species that have been roaming around here that I would like to try and identify for next year when I attempt to start an ant colony or two....or three.
Given how luck works I imagine I could get queens from any one of these species or none at all and I am open to any of them at this point. That perspective will probably shift as I learn more about who is who around here. I originally posted a lot of this in my Camponotus ocreatus thread but I think the name of the thread causes those new posts to get skipped over.
I live in Prescott Arizona and so we have pine and scrub oak with Juniper being in the area, but to my knowledge not in the area I live in and my property has plenty of the oak on it with pine not doing as well where I am at. I believe we are considered high desert.
These ants were not collected but typically found in my house with the exception of the final species whose nest I did manage to locate in the front yard(landscaped). I noticed that they had 2 different size workers, with the second size having very large heads.
The first two below I can give no measurements on so apologies for that, but they were seen and photographed around the same time as the Camponotus ocreatus queen from my other thread in the first week of July.
#1 I really love this first one below and am taking a guess at species based on this incredible website I discovered by accident! https://www.alexanderwild.com/Antshere it is for those interested. I believe based on the photos here that it is Camponotus festinatus. I only saw these at night. There were usually a handful of them and usually in my kitchen. I did manage to find a few outside here and there on my porch/sidewalk. I also found one queen with the same coloration as the worker below, with that queen being slightly smaller in size than the Camponotus in my other thread. http://www.formicult...creatus-queen/. I thought I had my hands full with that queen so I let the other one go. I truly wish I would have known more before I rediscovered a childhood interest in ants! Could have had me some interesting colonies next year! The worker below appears to be grooming herself. Probably not surprising, but the workers loved honey. The ones outside were not as eager to get honey but did still take some.
https://www.alexande...notus/i-xCQ38N4 - after making this post and trying this link, it won't work for some reason. So maybe this one will
https://www.alexande...era/Camponotus/ - this link works. So 9th row of pictures, 3rd photo starting from the left.
#2 I am pretty sure this one is a queen ant with male attached. I have had trouble finding any images of her online other than the photo I took of her on the stucco wall of my home. She was one of what I estimate to be a few thousand ants in the air. Any ant like the one below that fell from the air had a very aggressive male, or 2, attached. There were I am guessing about 6 of these "swarms" of them around my house. So this would be within the space of 130 feet by 100 feet, all flying at about the same elevation. The swarm this queen was photographed from was flying just at the edge of my roof - two story home - and when the swarm was approached from the roof, during attempts to get better photos, they seemed to notice me quickly and at least some of them flew towards me. At any rate, I do not have a definitive size reference but can say she couldn't have been bigger than the yellow ant above. I have seen this photo several times and it is only now that I can correctly see the attached male and what was probably a successful mating. I saved the photo below to my PC on July 10th at 6:45PM and I am fairly certain I did so on the same day as I took the photos. My intention was to post these prior to our Yellowstone trip which started on July 14th as I was hoping to learn more about them when I got back.
Remarkably, after digging through my saved photos I found more pictures, as well as a spoon I used to scoop a few out of a small pool we had on our porch at the time. The holes in the spoon measure at just over 6mm in length for reference.
In flight above my porch. If you could slow the video down to half speed I think it would be easy to see the queens periodically falling from the swarm. Those that fall always had a male attached to them.
#3 The next species has been active down to the 40 degree evenings we have had a few times this past week which surprises me because I can't find many other insects at all when it is this cold. I have been creating a very enticing "outworld" for them on my sidewalk and recently discovered their nest which is about 30-40 feet from the spots you see in the photo. Honey has for a week now been the only intensely desired resource to them. I put some hot dog out there as a protein source but it doesn't seem to be nearly as appealing as an insect protein source would probably be. Their gasters are quite full after they hit the honey and quite small before so they are certainly drinking this up and there is a constant stream right now of them going back and forth from where I put the food to the nest. There will be quite a few photos with a ruler in place so everyone can clearly get a sense of size of these.
Many photos below!
On my counter
This one got stuck in the honey. I tried to remove it so she could function as she normally would, but it didn't work out.
This is video of the trail to and from nest. They are very quick.
For those that the link above did not perform adequately on, please see the one below. Same Video. My PC is more than adequate for most things and the video performed poorly so I uploaded to youtube. I have not modified the speed of the video at all FYI. This is actual speed!
#4 While I was observing the ants in #3, I noticed maybe 2 of the ones pictured below which are even smaller than the ants in #3. Rather slow moving compared to the ants in #3. I assume pavement ants.
#5 While observing the nest today I noticed a few of the ants below. I tried to catch one because I could not get them to hold still long enough to get a decent measurement but when disturbed, they went from casual speed to absurd. I also only found them in the rocks in the yard and they seemed to know very well how to use the crevices to their advantage for hiding. If I get the chance in the next few days to get an accurate measurement of them I will provide that. The only thing I can do is guess at their size based on the ants in #3 which would put this ant at about 4-5mm. Easily twice the size or so of the ants in #3. Again, when disturbed these ants move incredibly fast.
Well that's the ants in my yard and in my home so far. If anyone has any idea what species any of the ants pictured might belong to I would love to hear it and thank you to anyone who takes the time to try to provide an ID. I realize that not some of the info I share might not be helpful and know some info that isn't provided would be beneficial to an accurate ID so if there is anything else I can provide please let me know!
Edited by Dukagora, June 30 2019 - 10:11 PM.
Fixed images and links
