1. Location of collection: 50 Km (30 miles) North of Lisbon Lisbon, Europe; on the country side.
2. Date of collection: September 17th 2022.
3. Habitat of collection: My front yard, on the pavement made out of cement bricks. Ants dig their nests in the dirt between bricks.
I live 50Km North of Lisbon, on the country side.
The queens were collected at night just after the mating flight. There were alate males all around the house, on the walls.
4. Length: 13mm. Down below you can find a photo of it, including a ruler (in mm) for reference.
5. Coloration: Black. White hairs.
6. Distinguishing characteristics: 2 petiole nodes. White hairs on the gaster and the thorax, more dense and up straight on the thorax.
7. Anything else distinctive: All queens were found walking on the floor, already without wings. The alate males were all on the walls of the house. No dead alate males were found on the ground.
I have some trees around and vegetable gardens and the soil was moist, but no queens were found there, not even under cement bricks or stones.
The soil was moist but the cement brick pavement was dry. It had been raining the days before after a very dry summer, they were the first rains of Fall/ Autumn.
There are at least 3 different species of ants in my front yard and I've found a couple of these queens hunted (very possibly) by other colonies, swarmed, killed, decapitated and dragged into their nests also between the cement bricks.
9. Nuptial flight time: I've arrived home at around 9:30PM, 1 hour after sun down. I didn't catch the nupcial flight but I thing I didn't arrive long after it happened. I've collected 10 queens, fed them honey and water. Some of them were visibly weak and 4 of them already died.
Fun trivia: I had the 4 dead queens on top of a piece of paper on my desk so I could take photos to upload here. After a while I've seen one little ant on the top of the table but I was very busy and could not pay attention to it. A couple of hours later the 4 dead queens were gone!!! They were swarmed by ants that got into my home by a crack on the corner of the floor. I managed to recover 3 of the queens while the invader ants were trying to push and squeeze the dead queens through their holes but being unable to do it. Of the 4th queen I could only see her head being carried in the direction of another hole, no signs of her body.
This is precisely what happened to the 2 Formica fusca colonies I had last year and precisely the same species of invasive ants storming my colonies, killing everyone, decapitated the queens and took them away, and carried the eggs and larvae away too.
After recovering the dead queens I was testing the macro lens on my phone to take the pictures and when I was trying to focus I could see the dead queen moving, it was being dragged by an invading worker! It's hard to take photos when your model is being stolen!
Video of it here:
Right now I've got the 3 dead queens inside a plastic container. The invader ants managed to swarm in and are trying to take the dead queens out, but they won't go through the opening, it's too small. These ants are true pests!!
Video of it here:
So what species could it be? Thank you so much for any help identifying it. Seems like I'm back, guys!!!
Attached Images
Edited by Formiga, September 16 2022 - 4:41 PM.
