14 replies to this topic

[TestSubjectOne]

10/2/2020:

 

I bought this queen from Theantguy14 a month and a half ago with a pile of eggs. She was found in the high desert and is large, about a quarter inch. She's been heated and checked on every few days since then. I gave her some ant brood and honey-soaked cotton for food, the latter being the cause of her physogastry. Surprisingly, instead of growing more one of her tiny larvae became a tiny pupa. As you can see from the images, the pupa is dwarfed by the queen. It will be interesting to see how the queen interacts workers 1/100 her own size, at least during the founding phase. Apparently her workers will grow substantially in the later generations, up to half the queen's own size. I hope they do because I will not be able to move this colony into their eventual home, a medium THA Fortress, otherwise. I would appreciate an ID although I don't think there is enough detail in these photos to get one. Once a worker dies I will get some better photos through my 60X lens and start an ID thread.

Edited by TestSubjectOne, February 13 2021 - 6:38 PM.

[ANTdrew]

Very cool! I look forward to following a western species of Crematogaster’s journey.

[TestSubjectOne]

10/9/2020:

After going back and forth, I've decided to keep this journal exclusively focused on my Crematogaster sp. rather than including my Liometopum occidentale colony which may get their own journal later on.

I left my this queen alone for a week since the last update at about 87 degrees in my incubator. Her first pupa is near eclosing and she has two new pupae and a sizeable amount of brood. I expect her to get her nanitics in the next few weeks. I will move them into a simple Boxbox outworld once test tube feeding gets difficult.

[ANTdrew]

She’ll have her first worker this weekend. Cheers!

[M_Ants]

In that case so will I. Yay!

[TestSubjectOne]

10/16/2020:

We've got nanitics! She had one eclose some time in the last week and two more today. Now that they are eclosed and fully stretched out the workers look much larger. The callows are pale and like to sit motionless by the queen, almost as if they are still pupae. My other species don't have nearly so pronounced a callow form. The first worker to eclose has darkened to near the queen's color but she runs around so fast that it was hard to get a picture of her.

They have had a lot of brood growth since last update as well. On top of their new pupae there is a group of larvae that looks near pupation and a large new batch of eggs. I gave them two dead Drosophila hydei fruit flies last night of which they have already eaten a good amount. I won't give them sugar yet because the queen is already physogastric with honey. Hold on to your hats because it looks like we have explosive growth ahead.

 

[ANTdrew]

Excellent! From my experience, Crematogaster should have constant access to sugars.

[TestSubjectOne]

Excellent! From my experience, Crematogaster should have constant access to sugars.

I'll give them some honey-cotton next time I take them out, thanks for the advice.

Edited by TestSubjectOne, October 16 2020 - 2:01 PM.

[TestSubjectOne]

10/23/2020:

 

This colony has grown to four workers. Despite being fully hardened they all still have their beautiful red/black coloration, which I'm glad about. Despite only having four workers, they are a real pain to feed in their test tube (not nearly as bad as my 20 worker Brachymyrmex patagonicus!) due to their tendency to rush out the end of their test tube at the slightest disturbance. I gave them honey-cotton last week, which I have seen them drinking from, and six live fruit flies yesterday which they killed and have piled up near their brood. They have a peculiar gaster-over-head pose that they use when confronted by enemies, which they seem to use both for spraying enemies with poison and summoning help. While I was feeding them a worker ran out of the tube onto my hand and ran in circles in this position until I returned her. Definitely a very active and interesting species. Their brood is growing quickly, though it has a pretty low volume compared to what I've heard is the norm for smaller Crematogasters. One of the pupae looks substantially bigger than the current workers, so I hope that this batch of brood will make up for a lack of numbers with an increase in size.

edit 2/13/2021: Corrected "formic acid" to "poison"

Edited by TestSubjectOne, February 13 2021 - 6:37 PM.

[TestSubjectOne]

I'm going to update my 3 journals over the next few days. I've been neglecting the journals for the past few months due to lack of motivation. However I have taken good care of my colonies, some of which have grown rapidly and have been rehoused into THA formicaria. This Crematogaster colony has expanded to about seventy workers in their new Mini Hearth.  Meanwhile, the most explosive growers have been my Brachymyrmex patagonicus and Liometopum occidentale, both well in the hundreds though neither have a journal. My Myrmecocystus mexicanus now have several semi-repletes and have grown considerably on top of that. Meanwhile, I have taken the advice of Cheetolord on feeding my Novomessor cockerelli more often (thank you), which has led to moderate growth in one colony while the other dwindled away for unknown reasons. Finally, my Veromessor pergandei have been slowly growing into their Fallen Fortress; they spent most of this period outside of my hot box due to lack of space, which has stunted their growth. I'll be posting about all of this and more over the next few days, complete with pictures, so don't forget to check out my journals!

[TestSubjectOne]

2/13/2021:

 

As promised, I'm going to be updating all of my journals and am starting with this one. My Crematogasters have come a long way since they got their first workers almost four months ago; they now have an estimated seventy workers and massive amounts of brood. After the Christmas sale, I moved my colonies over to Tarheel Ants formicaria, including this one which got a mini hearth. Though at the time they seemed far too small for the nest, at about that time I switched to regularly feeding my ants crickets and they have quickly filled it up. Like most of my ants, my Crematogaster vastly prefer crickets to mealworms and my switch to using store bought crickets has allowed me to feed my ants in much more bulk than before, sparking growth in all of my colonies.

While many ants place their brood on the glass to block out light, much to my annoyance my Crematogaster have been doing it despite being kept inside my dark hot box. As a result, seeing anything inside of their nest is a challenge as you can see in the picture above. They are already showing the polymorphism typical of their genus, though it is not yet easily noticeable. They are very thirsty ants and quickly drain their water feeder and honey-cotton.

This picture shows their outworld, complete with the remains of several crickets as well as their current meal. They have an interesting style of feeding, where they will pull off and retrieve little bits of their prey to feed their larvae until all that remains is a layer of sand-like material which can be seen covering their outworld. I have seen this phenomenon in my Liometopum occidentale, as well as reading a description of it in Drew's Solenopsis xyloni journal so I wonder which other species eat this way. Neither my Novomessors, Camponotus nor Brachymyrmex eat this way. It's certainly an interesting behavior to watch, but I worry about how I will go about cleaning it up when it becomes a problem.

[ANTdrew]

Nice progress! Crematogaster love sticking their brood in wierd places, but they usually choose the warmest. It’s interesting that my eastern C. cerasi has an entirely opposite feeding behavior than yours. A small percentage of workers will lap up fluids from insects, but they rarely drag anything into the nest. An aspirator would be very handy for dealing with the bug-dust they’re leaving behind.

[TestSubjectOne]

Great advice. Currently I'm in dire need of tweezers to clean out insect husks, so I'll get an aspirator as well.

[ANTdrew]

It is oddly fitting that Crematogaster journals are dominating the forum on Valentine’s Day.

[antsandmore]

It is oddly fitting that Crematogaster journals are dominating the forum on Valentine’s Day.

Then I will update my journal