37 replies to this topic

[James C. Trager]

Excellent journal, Crystals. The difference in personality (formicality?) between the two colonies is soemthing I've observed in other species. Looking forward to reading more on these...

[Crystals]

Colony 1: Well, I cheered too soon.  Within 48 hours, one aserva worker grabbed the nanitic by the petiole until it died - usually within a couple of hours.  One by one as they eclosed, they all received these treatment.  Some were moving for a few hours before the aserva found them, others went almost 2 full days before being discovered.

No nanitics survived.  The queen recently laid some eggs, no other brood though.

 

Saw my first 3 way trophallaxis

 

 

Colony 2: Almost all of the larvae spun cocoons, although 2 larvae didn't - and the naked pupae show that they are workers.

They have several cocoons, and a few large larvae.

[Matt]

This species is really beautiful!

[dspdrew]

Maybe you need to just remove all the other species.

[Crystals]

I have thought of that, but then one queen will only have one worker and the other queen will have none.  This species is parasitic, so they do need at least one host worker.

 

I figure I will give them some time to try to get it right.  At least until there are pupae in the wild nests, just in case something goes wrong.

[WeatherAnt]

That F. aserva worker seems like trouble. What are you going to do about her?

[Crystals]

That F. aserva worker seems like trouble. What are you going to do about her?

 

In colony 1, the podzolica workers were more trouble - they ate all of the brood.  So I removed the podzolica workers and just left a handful of aserva and the one ulkei.  Now the brood is at least making it to eclosing. There aren't any brood right now, so I will let them continue on in their deranged plans.  I don't plan on meddling with them until the wild nests have pupae - just in case I remove all of the workers but the one ulkei and the ulkei passes away for some reason.

 

In colony 2, I am making sure that there are always live fruit flies in the outworld, and it keeps the lone aserva in the outworld for the vast majority of the time.  Since the pupae are mostly in cocoons in this colony, the podzolica aren't causing any real issues yet.

[Crystals]

Figured I would update this before I forget something.  Bit long, but the ulkei's behavior is quite different from what I noticed when I raised a Formica aserva colony.

 

I spent about 20 min simply watching colony 2 (not exactly relaxing as I have to stand the whole time).

Colony 2 has their first nanitic 5 days ago and it is still alive.  In the last 3 days 2 more have popped out of the cocoons.

I see the typical confusion when a podzolica worker encounters a ulkei gaster, but the ulkei that emerge from the cocoons seem much more aware and mobile than Colony 1's naked pupae.  The new workers seem to know that excessive interest in their hairy bottoms isn't good, and they move away. 

 

The one podzolica worker seems upset by the ulkei workers and keeps grabbing a leg, and attempting to drag the worker or simply prevent her from moving.  After a few minutes with the ulkei not reacting the podzolica comes forward and taps her antennae on the ulkei's head/thorax, lets go of the leg and wanders off.  Shortly to be back holding the leg again.

I also observed a lot of the other workers attempting what looked like a hesitant bite at the ulkei's gaster, or they engaged in a fierce cleaning session that looked like they were trying to scrape the hairs off.

 

I did notice one particular behavior that surprised me, I only saw one instance of it.  Two of the ulkei workers were in a corner engaged in cleaning themselves and the pesky foot grabbing podzolica came by noticed the hairy gaster and attempted to grab a foot - only for the ulkei worker to make a snap at her.  The podzolica tried twice more for a foot and once for an antennae, with each encounter being met with an irritated mandible snap from the ulkei worker.  The podzolica seemed extremely confused and went away.  This was the same ulkei that I had seen the podzolica pin/hold numerous times - and later that night I also saw the podzolica holding the foot of the same ulkei worker, with none of the snappy irritation shown earlier. 

I am not seeing any extreme aggression, or even any actual fighting.  It is like when one worker encounters another from the same nest and knows she is sick - the worker will remove the sick one from the nest.

 

I also noticed one other oddity - the ulkei and the podzolica seem to have a bit of a feeding problem between the two species.  Perhaps because of the large difference in head and mandible size between the species.  The podzolica simply go face to face, with their heads level and feed one another.  The ulkei have more oblong heads with much bigger mandibles, and when 2 ulkei feed one another they tilt their heads to a 45 degree angle to get around the large mandibles.  When a podzolica and a ulkei meet, they are willing to feed the other, but the podzolica wants to keep her head level while the ulkei can't do that because her long mandilbes simply won't allow it.  The ulkei will tilt her head a bit which confuses the podzolica, who breaks off and wanders away.

The one ulkei got around this, she stood on the wall and hung her head upside down to beg from a worker on the floor. This worked.

[Crystals]

Colony 1: No change and no new brood.

 

Colony 2:

20 new cocoons were spun recently and are being carefully tended by everyone, 8 or so large larvae and a pile of eggs (about 15 or so I think).

19 ulkei workers in total have eclosed.  In the last week I have not seen any podzolica workers grab any of the ulkei workers - I am pretty sure the dead body in the outworld is the irritating podzolica worker.

 

The last week I have occasionally seen the oldest ulkei worker grabbing the leg of a podzolica worker and trying to drag it outside of the nest.  The last few days another ulkei worker has also started grabbing the podzolica that the first ulkei grabs.  I have not been able to observe often enough to determine if it is the same podzolica worker each time, but I don't think so.

 

The ulkei workers are also trimming this queens wings a bit more, they cover her thorax but not much more.

[Crystals]

Colony 1: No new brood. The aserva slowly died off, and about 2 weeks ago, for some reason or other, the queen fell upside down and got her wings stuck to the bottom of the test tube.  Despite me checking them at least 3-4 times a day, she still passed away before I found her.  Her lone worker passed away this week. Thus ends colony 1.

 

Colony 2: Not too long after my previous update the foot-grabbing podzolica appeared in the garbage pile.  Most of the pupae eclosed without too many losses, and someone ate the eggs.

For months there had been no change. 

Their nest got a bit dirty so in September I moved them to a new grout nest, at this time there were about 25 ulkei workers in the nest.  I managed to remove most of the Formica podzolica and aserva workers.  About 5 podzolica workers made it to the new nest before I could catch them.

Shortly after the move, the queen started laying eggs.  She seem to be laying them slowly, with 2 week breaks in between the 2 weeks of laying eggs.  Right now I have several large larvae, more smaller larvae, and a bigger bunch of eggs.

 

I have tested a number of foods, and they really like the smaller insects that they can carry around by themselves.  Fruit flies, small centipedes, tiny spider, baby dubai roach nymphs, etc.  Bigger cut up things had some juices drunk and then were ignored (such as mealworms, crickets, etc).

 

[Crystals]

Long time with no update.  Just more crazy drama.

 

I went away for a week during Christmas 2014 and came back to find most of the workers were decapitated and dead.  All of the brood is also missing.  I have no clue what happened.

 

This colony went into hibernation in February 2015 with 8 ulkei workers and the queen.  No more host workers are left.  They got moved into a tiny 2 chamber formicarium (that move was not fun, I had to peel the glass off of the nest to get them out).

 

They came out of hibernation in early October.  The queen and 2 ulkei workers are alive...

 

This morning (Oct. 22, 2015) there is a small clump of eggs in the nest.

 

I am hoping they do better. Or else this journal may be coming to an end. 

I never did find a wild nest to steal a few pupae to boost them with - and I spent many hours and numerous days looking the last 2 years.  I have found dozens of other Formica species though.

[dermy]

Wow that is just devastating, wonder what happened?

[LC3]

Civil war?

[Crystals]

As the two host workers died for unknown reasons I boosted with 2 pupae from my Formica podzolica colony.  So the queen is still alive.

We will see how she does on round two.

 

I also found another ulkei queen with I boosted with 2 Formica podzolica pupae, and one eclosed successfully.

 

Either I could be doing something incorrectly, or this species has a hard time getting established.  Considering I have 4 other parasitic Formica species who are doing fine, I think it is just this species.

[Crystals]

The queen with one worker killed it for some unknown reason and eventually died as she would not accept any more pupae.

The other queen I gave to a friend.

 

 

On a side note, I actually found a small ulkei colony that is probably in its first year under my wood pile.

When I picked up the log the queen and 5 of her own workers were in one chamber in the dirt.  5 Formica podzolica host workers were in a separate chamber about 5 inches away under the same log.  Once disturbed they went to the main chamber to help defend it and mingled with the F. ulkei workers without issue.  So it looks like the host workers segregate themselves once the initial workers eclose which is quite interesting.  I collected this colony since the wood pile was being moved.

 

I recently found two Formica ulkei queens.  I decided to do an experiment where I put the queen in a test tube with one pupae from my newly found Formica ulkei colony.  I took a piece of metal mesh and bent it until it fit inside of the test tube to form a barrier.  I observed the other F. ulkei colony and grabbed the least aggressive worker I could see and put it on the other side of the mesh and plugged the tube the queen was on one side of the mesh and the worker was on the other side.  I did have to add water or sugar water twice daily to keep the worker hydrated.  After five days I carefully pulled the cotton out (with the worker on it) and removed the mesh from the test tube before replugged the tube with the cotton and ant inside.  After one or two threat displays both calmed down and are getting along just fine.  I have seen several sessions of trophallaxis and even after just ten minutes I cannot see any differences in behavior from a normal queen with her own worker.

I would not attempt this with more than one worker since Formica generally do not accept adult workers, the only reason I had tried as I had seen a different parasitic Formica queen adopt an adult worker right from its own colony.  I have put my other queen in a similar setup to see if she will also accept a worker or if the above case was just a stroke of luck.

 

I finally found a wild nest as well.  It was deep in the underbrush along a trail and the mound was about knee high.  Took me forever to locate it since I found dozens of workers up to 50 feet away. They are surprisingly aggressive even for a Formica. Not quite as aggressive as larger Formica aserva workers, but pretty close.

[TennesseeAnts]

What happened to these?

[T.C.]

What happened to these?

Photobucket stopped third party hosting. Since that's what she used in all her tutorials and journals it's gonna take a while to fix all the posts.

Edited by T.C., December 30 2017 - 1:59 PM.

[TennesseeAnts]

I was talking about the colonies.