21 replies to this topic

[Ants.co]

Hey guys! Been quite a while since I posted, but seeing how few Fire Ant journals are around on Formiculture these days, I decided to throw mine into the mix. I've had this colony for 30 weeks now, and have kept consistent video updates every two weeks or so, but have never gotten the chance to create a journal on them. Until now. Without further ado, let's begin!

 

October 16, 2022 (Week 2)

 

 

This all began with a challenge I set myself... When I first moved to Thailand from Australia, I vowed to keep and raise the first ant queen I find, no matter what species, no excuses. I was hoping for something cool like an Oecophylla or Odontomachus queen, but the first queen I encountered turned out to be a Geminata. Welp, I've heard a lot of bad stuff about them, especially their scary growth rate, but they can't be all bad, right?

 

October 30, 2022 (Week 4)

 

 

Starting to fall in love with this cute little founding queen, her tiny nanitic pupae are sooo cute... (The fact that they went from egg to pupae in THREE WEEKS didn't seem to hit home at the time - that's insane compared to anything I've seen in Australia)

 

November 13, 2022 (Week 6)

 

 

Here we go, 8 workers, 5 dark pupae and plenty more brood... Their test tube was also getting a bit dirty, which was concerning, but they didn't seem to care too much :-D

 

November 27, 2022 (Week 8)

 

 

Oh boy. 15+ workers, brood galore - and I thought this was too fast at the time... clearly I did not expect what would be coming next

 

December 11, 2022 (Week 10)

 

 

After nearly suffocating them by accident, I dumped them all into a Mini Hearth outworld... The ants were all unconscious, and I thought I stuffed up good    Fortunately they all reanimated within half an hour, and the video is them after making a full recovery, a day later.  

 

December 25, 2022 (Week 12)

 

 

They built a dome out of sand, and completely denied any hope of filming or observing them... Nice. They stayed in this dome for the whole of Thailand's Winter, so it wasn't until February next year that I made the next update.

 

February 26, 2023 (Week 20)

 

 

Well, I accidentally destroyed their sand dome when feeding one day, and what I saw both thrilled and scared me... They've grown. A lot. About 40+ workers, and lots more brood   Now that Winter was over, the fun could really begin.

 

March 19, 2023 (Week 23)

 

 

Exponential growth has begun, I'm not even going to bother counting, but they've at least doubled as of 3 weeks ago

 

April 2, 2023 (Week 25)

 

 

Easily triple what they had 2 weeks ago   Help?

 

April 16, 2023 (Week 27)

 

 

BOOM. Tripled AGAIN. 200+ workers, and counting    To get a perspective you must watch the footage yourself 

 

April 30, 2023 (Week 29)

 

 

Like, it's not even funny anymore... 500+, easily a lot more, and double that in brood. They went from 50 or so workers to several hundred in a month, is this good news?

 

That's what has happened so far, and a rather huge update tomorrow, so stay tuned!    

 

 

 

 

[ANTdrew]

Insane!

[Ants.co]

May 7, 2023 (Week 30)

 

 

New formicarium, explosive growth, here we go!!!

[Ants.co]

They've easily tripled again, into the thousands... 

[Ants.co]

Now they've completely filled their formicarium... I'm considering to release them very soon, as I have no more nests available, and they are native to my area (in fact, they are literally everywhere in Thailand).

 

[ANTdrew]

DO NOT release the colony. They are present in your area, but they are NOT native. If you can no longer keep the colony they should be frozen or otherwise destroyed. 

[AntsCali098]

Or given away

[ANTdrew]

Another option to make the colony more manageable would be to cut down their population by culling excess workers. 

[AntsCali098]

You could also cut down their protein intake.

[Ants.co]

They are native, I'm in Chiang Mai, Thailand where they are literally everywhere... 

[Ants.co]

Well I guess they aren't technically native, but they are VERY well established

[ANTdrew]

They are established invaders, not a native species. They are native to the southern United States and Central America. In Asia, they are in fact the very opposite of native, a destructive invasive species.

[Miles]

They are established invaders, not a native species. They are native to the southern United States and Central America. In Asia, they are in fact the very opposite of native, a destructive invasive species.

I'd like to reiterate this. PLEASE do not release them, even if they're very common in Chiang Mai (my favorite city in Thailand, by the way!). As ANTdrew said, they should not be released. You can freeze them overnight and discard the remains if you need to get rid of the colony.

 

Even native ants should generally not be released. They can acquire pathogens from feeder insects which could have negative impacts on your native insect fauna.

[Ants.co]

 

I am scared.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

VIDEO NOT REPOSTED

 

I am scared.

I  do not belvei you can defend taking the path of least responsibility here.
The responsibility was to kill them and not do what you did.

This is not any differetn than, i swear i'm a really good driver and can handle going over the speed limit, so i'm not doing the responsible thing cause i swear don't personally need to.

 

If you gonna do that, generally better to not tell anyone about it either.
That whole forgiveness vs permission thing is specificity predicated on the fact that you didn't ask first.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, June 17 2023 - 10:37 AM.

[bmb1bee]

To be honest, this would be equivalent to me catching a single RIFA queen down in SoCal, raising them to several thousand workers, then releasing them back into the wild where they are fairly abundant in downtown Los Angeles. Which is ironically also chock-full of dozens of invasive species. The problem with this? I once found a Pogonomyrmex colony hiding in a small strip of dirt in a suburban neighborhood, the last place I expected to find them. Native species are still struggling to survive, despite being in an area surrounded by non-native invaders.

 

Please reconsider this...

[Ants.co]

To be honest, this would be equivalent to me catching a single RIFA queen down in SoCal, raising them to several thousand workers, then releasing them back into the wild where they are fairly abundant in downtown Los Angeles. Which is ironically also chock-full of dozens of invasive species. The problem with this? I once found a Pogonomyrmex colony hiding in a small strip of dirt in a suburban neighborhood, the last place I expected to find them. Native species are still struggling to survive, despite being in an area surrounded by non-native invaders.

 

Please reconsider this...

Not really... Your illustration exaggerates my situation by a notch.

First of all, they aren't RIFA, they are Tropical Fire Ants, which aren't as deadly.

Secondly, I released them EXACTLY (as in 10 meters) from where I initially found the queen. I didn't travel at all.

Thirdly, there are at least 5 mature Fire Ant colonies in the immediate vicinity of their point of release - any natives that would be wiped out, have been wiped out already.

[bmb1bee]

According to AntWiki, geminata are actually more widespread in exotic countries than invicta. Your reasoning does not warrant them as being “less dangerous” than invicta. I wouldn’t be surprised if they one day made it to the list of top 100 invasive species, like the RIFA are.

As for the second issue, my point wasn’t about location. It was about the hope for any remaining natives in the area. Now instead of 5 large colonies they have to deal with to survive, they have 6 colonies on their hands thanks to the addition of your colony.

How would you know that there aren’t any natives left?

Edited by bmb1bee, June 17 2023 - 3:44 PM.

[ANTdrew]

You ignored solid advice from legit entomologists and highly knowledgable members on here. That’s on you, FAFO.

[Serafine]

"The ants are here already so it doesn't change anything."
"They're not as dangerous as invicta."

"It's not illegal."

 

You sound like some entitled social media influencer trying to gather clicks by doing stupid crap for clout.

You clearly want to stay ingorant, so any further effort here is just wasted time.

Edited by Serafine, June 17 2023 - 4:22 PM.