9 replies to this topic

[SuperFrank]

Odontomachus brunnneus is known to have rather complex intracolony relations, in which they will engage in antennal dueling to establish dominance and a heirarchy within the colony. I have observed ritual dominance behavior in my mature Odontomachus brunneus colony in which several members will physically restrain another worker for several minutes while shivering their antennae.

 

I have also excavated brunneus colonies with multiple dealate queens in the nest though to my knowledge they will not engage in pleometrosis. With the knowledge that they had relatively complex intracolony relations as well as finding multiple queens in a nest I decided to attempt to introduce a second queen to my colony and see if they engage in secondary polygyny.

 

I have had this colony for two years and raised it from a lone queen collected in Perry, FL in June of 2018. The queen I introduced was collected in Gainesville, FL (over one hundred miles away) and was almost certainly not closely related at all. Upon introduction the queen immediately began engaging in submission/begging behavior with the workers she encountered and occasionally engaged in antennal sparring, after 30 or so minutes she was taken inside the nest, I cannot confirm if she was accepted but I witnessed absolutely no aggression at all. Below is a short video showcasing the described behavior:

Edited by SuperFrank, July 25 2020 - 3:34 PM.

[Superant33]

Interested in how this progresses.

[ponerinecat]

Lovely!

[SuperFrank]

7/25/20 update:

 

As the colony is housed in a vivarium I cannot check to see if the queen has since been killed or not but I have yet to see any dead body or sign of such, though that is meaningless and she could easily be dead. I have since released 7 more queens into the vivarium, 5 were accepted, 2 were killed. 

 

We have had huge flights of brunneus in our area and have collected large numbers of queens, assuming they were closely related and there even being a good chance of them being related (over 50 were collected in a ~25 sq ft area) I decided to combine several specimens into groups of 2 - 3 and observe the resulting behavior. I have previously tried to introduce dealate brunneus queens to each other with violent results and was surprised to see all but two groups engaging in dominance behavior. The groups immediately began to establish a heirarchy and began to engage in "aggressive grooming". below is a video, excuse the foul language.

 

[Antkid12]

Nice video!

[RushmoreAnts]

Fascinating........ I will be following their progress. Hopefully they will raise workers? If so, from your videos, it would seem that the workers aren't aggressive towards the queens, and it would be the queens that would fight, if any killing were to be done at all.

Edited by AntsDakota, July 25 2020 - 4:20 PM.

[SuperFrank]

8/01/20:

The initial group consisted of 16 queens, 5 tubes contained pairs of queens and 2 tubes contained groups of three. One group of 3 never settled down, they all seemed to be submissive and we're constantly running from and avoiding each other, snapping their jaws when startled but not actually attacking/displaying aggression. After two days this trio was added to my mature colony and I will be unable to report more about them. Of the remaining 6 tubes, 3 have had deaths. 2 pairs have lost a member each and 1 trio has been reduced to a lone queen, in total 4 queens have been killed. The other 3 tubes have retained both queens each and all tubes contain eggs.

[SuperFrank]

A (currently) successful pair

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[SuperFrank]

An unsuccessful trio.

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[RushmoreAnts]

How are these doing?