6 replies to this topic

[Mdrogun]

I have a colony Forelius sp. with ~200 workers, 1 queen, and 300-400 pieces of brood. These Forelius are dissimilar enough to Forelius pruinosus and Forelius mccooki that I suspect they should be their own seperate species of Forelius. For one, all of the colonies I have ever excavated have been monogynous. Secondly, they are much more cryptic than F. pruinosus and F. mccooki. The colonies in the wild typically contain somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000-2,000 workers. Sometimes they will be polydomous, other times they aren't. They have a very weird activity cycle, and most of the times won't even forage unless the ground temperature is in excess of 85-90F. Even if the ground temperatures are that high, it seems that oftentimes the colonies are just like "I don't feel like foraging today, lol". The queen of this colony is also quite physogastric. In the wild, when I collected her, she looked like a termite queen  . This may just be because of the incredibly polygyny that is typically found in US Forelius spp. but I have yet to see a US Forelius spp. queen that has gotten so physogastric. The other huge indicator here is the isolation of the Forelius sp. population. They only do good in soils that have a high sand content and in areas with a low amount of vegetation. As you can imagine, that's not much of the Midwest. So the populations I find in different areas are likely isolated and have been for quite some time. This is one of the indicators biologists look for when throwing around the idea of a new species. Their unique bi-coloration is also quite unusual for Forelius specimens, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are a separate species.

 

I'm going to be keeping a journal of this colony here to document their behaviors and progress as a colony. So far, they have around ~200 larvae, some are in pre-molt, a single alate pupae, and roughly 100 eggs that have been laid by the queen in my care. Considering that the queen is continuing to swell, and I keep the colony at 100F+, I expect to see her laying significantly more eggs as well as incredible egg-to-worker development times.

 

Here is a video of them:

At 40 seconds you can witness a worker laying an egg and then feeding it to the queen. Just thought that was neat, since it's not commonly captured on video.

 

Let me know if you guys think this should indeed be a separate species of Forelius spp. or if you think the discrepancies I'm noticing are just a-typical intraspecies variation. 

Edited by Mdrogun, June 14 2020 - 2:03 PM.

[Antennal_Scrobe]

Who knows. Maybe you should send specimens to an expert; whether or not the species is new, Forelius are rare in the Midwest.

[Mdrogun]

Who knows. Maybe you should send specimens to an expert; whether or not the species is new, Forelius are rare in the Midwest.

I was considering that, but I truly think that unless we have a serious taxonomic rework of the entire genus in the US, it's just gonna key out to F. pruinosus or F. mccooki since all the key asks you to look for is some hairs on the scape. I need to reach out to a few myrmecologist taxonomists and see what they think.

[123LordOfAnts123]

Forelius pruinosus is almost undoubtedly a species complex. The specimens here in Florida are a uniform dark brown/gray and the queens are usually bicolored grey and reddish brown. They’re also Monogynous in a similar manner to yours, at least I’ve never found multiple fertile queens in any excavation. (And the queens usually kill each other when founded together shortly before or after workers arrive)

[Mdrogun]

Forelius pruinosus is almost undoubtedly a species complex. The specimens here in Florida are a uniform dark brown/gray and the queens are usually bicolored grey and reddish brown. They’re also Monogynous in a similar manner to yours, at least I’ve never found multiple fertile queens in any excavation. (And the queens usually kill each other when founded together shortly before or after workers arrive)

Something that confuses me so much about this is that I don't think I've ever seen in a publication about either F. pruinosus or F. mccooki that some populations could be or are monogynous. In every description I read of their biology it's always like "They have massive, massive colonies with tons and tons of queens." Wouldn't somebody of noticed this at some point? Unless it's really just been completely overlooked that these potentially monogynous populations exist, and nobody really cares enough to do any kind of reform.

[gcsnelling]

Forelius is the U. S. is a project no one in their  right mind wants to tackle.

[Antennal_Scrobe]

Forelius is the U. S. is a project no one in their  right mind wants to tackle.

Speaking of species complexes, has anyone ever looked at the U.S. Crematogaster in that regard? They are such a uniquely frustrating genus to identify because of the close similarity of many species and the huge variability of C. cerasi.