6 replies to this topic

[Tai_pan1]

I am hesitant to post this, as I cannot get any decent pictures with my phone.  The other night, when black lighting, I caught 5 of these along with the 3 queens that the helpful people on this forum identified as Pheidole.  I checked today, and it appears that all 5 have eggs, so I figured I would try to get an id.  These queens are really small, maybe 2mm.  Large gastor compared to the rest of the body.  Gastor has some yellowish lines on the bottom.  The rest of the ant appears black.  First pic is from underneath. Second pic is from above, through a plastic test tube.  Again, sorry for the poor quality photos.  I’m just hoping someone can point me in a direction so I can look at photos online and try to nail down an id.

 

They we’re caught around 2115 at night, under black light.  Suburban yard, warm humid evening.

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Edited by Tai_pan1, May 28 2022 - 7:22 AM.

[Manitobant]

Get better photos. I can barely see the queen.

[Tai_pan1]

These might be a little better.

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[FloridaAnts]

Kind of looks like Brachymyrmex patagonicus. I’ll leave it up to the more experienced ID’ers though.

[Manitobant]

Those pics are a lot better. I’d agree with FloridaAnts that it is brachymyrmex patagonicus. If you find more queens, you can stick them together as these guys are highly polygynous.

Edited by Manitobant, May 28 2022 - 9:04 AM.

[Tai_pan1]

Those pics are a lot better. I’d agree with FloridaAnts that it is brachymyrmex patagonicus. If you find more queens, you can stick them together as these guys are highly polygynous.

I have 5 of them in separate test tubes.  All have eggs.  At this point, could I combine them all in one test tube?

Edited by Tai_pan1, May 28 2022 - 9:35 AM.

[FloridaAnts]

You could, but you may risk the eggs as the queens may get stressed. If you want a multi queen colony, they should merge together just as well with workers. That way, you also don’t have unmated queens eating mated queens eggs.

I will see if I can catch some soon. All I can catch is Brachymyrmex obscurior, probably because of my area.

Edited by FloridaAnts, May 28 2022 - 10:39 AM.