Caught her at a park running across a sand dune. There was a Solenopsis colony nearby but I am 99% sure she is not a Solenopsis. Caught 11/12/2021. She is still alive and seems to have settled into her test tube. The park is at a river mouth and she was caught probably about 50 ft from the shoreline. She is about 6-7 mm long.
The coloration in the images does her justice, her thorax and head are a bright orange and her gaster is brown with paler orange at the edges of each segment. She is entirely smooth with relatively large eyes and seems largely hairless. Based on my inexperienced eyes I think she is a formicine ant of some kind, but I was unable to find any native species that look anything like her, and I'm not familiar enough with all the invasive ants in Florida to know of any nonnative ones it could be. Her antenna don't really seem to have any distinguishable segments, they're pretty thin. Her jaws remind me a lot of a Lasius queen's jaws, but overall her head is a lot smaller. She is very fast for her size on the ground. In the test tube she is very subdued and does not startle easily, and really seems to like moisture as she is tightly hugging the wettest part of the cotton. She was wingless when I found her however considering the only other ants around were Solenopsis, and she was not looking around confused like a lot of queens do when being moved between colonies, I am inclined to believe she had just landed recently.
I asked on two different ant Reddits and got nothing. 
Any info that may at all be helpful, confirming she is a Formicine ant, list of invasive ants to Florida, etc. would be greatly appreciated. She is super gorgeous and I want to make sure I care for her properly.
Edited by Flish, November 15 2021 - 1:56 PM.
