166 replies to this topic

[Subverted]

Novomessor cockerelli given to me by Drew, so far doing very well. There are 4 workers now but one is still waking up in this photo:

 

Edited by Subverted, August 24 2015 - 3:22 PM.

[LC3]

That queen has a really nice red colour. 

[William. T]

Interesting color. I don't suppose the North American Messor/Veromessor/Novomessor made it across the land bridge?

[Subverted]

 

This colony really loves to forage. Last night almost all the workers were out foraging when I turned on the light.

 

I have 4 honeypot queens with workers now so photos of them in the next few days!

Edited by Subverted, September 13 2015 - 3:51 PM.

[William. T]

Beautiful footage! Do all desert ants in the SW smaller than a Pogonomyrmex forage at night?

[Mdrogun]

Wait you let them just roam on your desk? Won't they get attacked by argentine's?

[Subverted]

Wait you let them just roam on your desk? Won't they get attacked by argentine's?

 

So far they have been fine, but yes that is a constant threat to them and any of my ant (or other bug) containers they can get into.

[PogoQueen]

Love the pictures of your Aspergillus flavus! Very cool

[Subverted]

Got a video of one of the honeypot colonies up tonight:

 

 

 

Love the pictures of your Aspergillus flavus! Very cool

 

Thanks! Are you pretty confident on that ID? Have any Aspergillus ID tips?
 

[kellakk]

Hey wait, that black-and-red Myrmecocystus has way different workers than mine. The queen looks pretty much the same though.  Do you know what species it is?

[Gregory2455]

No! Not yellow afro!!!

 

How'd you get such a big P.gilvescens colony again?

[Subverted]

Hey wait, that black-and-red Myrmecocystus has way different workers than mine. The queen looks pretty much the same though.  Do you know what species it is?

 

I don't have any IDs on my Myrmecocystus besides the M. mexicanus and M. navajo. The queen in that video is the one on the far left in the first photo of this post: http://www.formicult...ge-2#entry26033

 

No! Not yellow afro!!!

 

How'd you get such a big P.gilvescens colony again?

 

I collected a queen and when digging up founding chambers I ran into a bunch of brood/workers. I put the fresh queen with the brood and workers the day after getting home and everything seemed to work out just fine. Possibly a video of them coming soon.

[PogoQueen]

Yes I am pretty confident on that ID! I worked with this mold in the lab it is a very common contaminate aspergillus species. As far as I know it is the only yellow (from your 40x) aspergillus species. Your Direct mount was really hard to see the structures though. You can clean it up and it would help in future ID's if you could stain with lactophenol cotton blue if you have access to it and then covering the mold with a cover slip. For aspergillus I personally like the double sided sticky tape method because the conidia, phialide, and metula tend to disintegrate if your not careful about putting them on your direct mount. Here's a pretty good site to give you a  quick morphology of that species: http://www.coloss.or...II/fungal/2/3/1

[dspdrew]

Hey wait, that black-and-red Myrmecocystus has way different workers than mine. The queen looks pretty much the same though.  Do you know what species it is?

 

Those workers actually look just like the workers of the "purple-back" ones I ID'd as M. mimicus. If you look at those queens he has, they really pretty much have the same colors as the "purple-back" queens, only one has much more of the darker color, and the other has much more of the lighter color. I've seen this a lot in other queens with a large color variation.

[Subverted]

Went out for a short hike today and this Pseudomyrmex apache queen came running up to me. can't complain about that!

 

[specimen24-6]

She looks so primitive, like a wasp without wing. I can see why scientist think ants evolved from wasp I love primitive looking ants.

Edited by specimen24-6, September 23 2015 - 9:14 PM.

[kellakk]

  So lucky...

[Gregory2455]

Went out for a short hike today and this Pseudomyrmex apache queen came running up to me. can't complain about that!

 

I wonder if your's will lay any eggs. Mine has not ever since I caught her back in June.

[dspdrew]

Wow lucky you. It will be interesting to see if you get any further than I did with these.

[LC3]

Good luck sub.