133 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

Come on wook, not every ant can be red and black. 

 

Cute though.  How big are those nanitics anyways?

I would guess about 5.5 mm.

[Crystals]

Wow.  That is bigger than I originally thought.

How large is that queen?  She must be around 10-12mm.

[dspdrew]

That sounds about right. 11 would be my guess.

[dspdrew]

Update 12-7-2013

The forth worker eclosed today.

[wook]

Come on wook, not every ant can be red and black. 

Well, not red and black but black and red!

[dspdrew]

Update 12-24-2013

The colony has 5 workers now, 4 big larvae, and a new batch of eggs.

[dspdrew]

Update 12-27-2013

Ok, all of those alates I found much later have been up in the cupboard all this time. The other day I looked them all over and didn't see anything but eggs; many of them had nothing at all. Well today I just noticed that two of the dealates actually each have one small larva in with all their eggs. I gave these two some food and placed them back in a spot where they won't be disturbed very much. I also put four others there too that might possibly have larvae forming. As for the rest, I just let them go outside. Well see what happens with this.

[dspdrew]

Update 1-22-2014

Things are going good for this colony. They now have seven workers, three pupae, three larvae, and a new batch of eggs. I moved them into the foraging container that I was keeping my P. californicus colony in. Hopefully they will do even better now, like I have seen with every other colony of ants I've put in these containers.

[WeatherAnt]

I love the coloration of these ants; they're pretty amazing. I'm glad to see that they are doing well. Keep us posted!

[dspdrew]

Update 3-18-2014

The colony is doing well in the foraging container. Right now they have eight workers, two pupae, five larvae, and a few new eggs. They have caked the inside of the test tube with dirt near the cotton to block out the light, so it's getting hard to see them.

 

The two seemingly infertile queens both had one larvae start to develop, but one queen ate hers, and the other queen's died. Now one of them has another larvae that grew pretty big, but seems to have stopped growing or developing.

[Anthony]

Most of your updates haven't been so good

[dspdrew]

That's because I'm updating all of the journals that haven't had much of any news, and a lot of those happen to be colonies that are not doing too well. This one is doing great though, just growing kind of slow.

[dspdrew]

Update 7-7-2014

The first storm of the 2014 monsoon season went through Phelan/Victorville, California area of the Mojave Desert July 4th, setting off a P. rugosus mating flight the next day.
 
Here's the full thread about this anting trip and the mating flight.
https://www.formicul...nting-7-5-2014/
 
Right around 11:00 am, near the El Mirage Off Highway Vehicle Recreation Area where we stopped on the side of the road, tons of alates started landing and ripping their wings off. For the rest of the day, they were running around the area and digging their founding chambers. I of course filled every container I had with me.
 

 
 
There were so many founding chambers, some were just inches apart.
 

 

 
 
P. rugosus queens digging their founding chambers.
 

 
 
I managed to catch a queen removing her wings on video.
 

 
 
Within one day most of these queens, while biting at the cotton like crazy, already have eggs laid.
 
As for my original colony, they're still doing great, but growing very slowly. Hopefully out of all these new queens, I'll end up with a much faster growing and more productive colony.

[Gregory2455]

Is the queen semi-clausteral, like in P.californicus and needs to forage before she gets her first nanitic?

[dspdrew]

Nope. These are one of the few Pogonomyrmex species that are fully-claustral.

[Gregory2455]

So I can just leave em in a test tube setup without havin to feed em? Cause I just got back from the desert with 8 of these queens!!! 

[dspdrew]

Awesome! Yes you can leave them in their test tubes. Feeding fully-claustral queens is a good idea too, unless disturbing them is doing more harm. These are most likely all fertile, so just watch, and if their eggs don't seem to be developing, then they are eating them. In that case, stop disturbing them for a week at a time, and they might eventually stop doing that.

 

Did you find any still out running around, or did you have to dig them all up? Also, the ones you dug up, were they more or less than a foot deep? And, what would you say your success rate was digging them up?

[Gregory2455]

I caught only one of them running around, my success rate was about 1 out of every three founding chambers had a live queen, and all the ones I caught were all about 4-8 inches deep. I did not dig so deep, I may have had a better success rate if i would've dug deeper...

[dspdrew]

Nice. All that is about what I would have expected. A little surprised that some were only four inches deep though.

[Gregory2455]

Yeah, they were not really deep at all.