22 replies to this topic

[Huch]

Ok so, after reading AntsRus thread about brood boosting, a strange thought came to me.

 

A brood boost attempt with a wasp, hornet, or bee egg/grub.  This will be a moderately difficult thing to do without getting stung hehe. I am guessing the smaller the egg/grub, the better. If you put a bucket beneath a high up open nest, grubs usually fall by accident, and will go into the bucket.

 

I am working on this now, but if anybody else can manage it, please post about it.

[drtrmiller]

Not sure I understand what you're trying to do.

 

Ants will eat them.  

 

Winged insects will ignore larvae that have been disturbed or altered from their placement in the nest.

Edited by drtrmiller, August 1 2015 - 5:02 PM.

[Huch]

The goal is to see if the ants will accept the egg/larvea across order and family. Ants do accept eggs/larvea of other species, possibly other genus. This is a step up the chain.

[drtrmiller]

Ants accept larvae of similar species because of shared molecular compounds found in the hairs on the larvae, and matching receptors on the antennae of the workers—compounds that have evolved over millions of years to help the blind workers identify brood from food.

 

The evolutionary purpose of this arose because ants lost their wings, and many lost their sight, and they needed to move brood around, sometimes across vast distances or without any visible light, unlike wasps and bees, whose larvae are generally glued to the nest and are not mobile.

 

It will not work for ants.

Edited by drtrmiller, August 1 2015 - 9:25 PM.

[Huch]

Spare the education, have you tried it?

[Ants4fun]

I have fed wasp Grubbs to ants before... but that's all.

[Huch]

I would think wasps grubs would be the most readily acceptable. Maybe I will try to get a hold of some wasp eggs.

[dspdrew]

90 percent of the time when I give ants brood of even just a different species, they either dump it in the trash or eat it. I can't imagine how they would possibly accept brood of something from a completely different family.

[BugFinder]

Spare the education, have you tried it?

 

Why would you want to spare the education?  Education is wonderful!

 

That being said, I'm interested to know how this turns out for you.  If you try it, please keep us updated on the results.  Photos of the process would be wonderful!

[dspdrew]

 

Spare the education, have you tried it?

 

Why would you want to spare the education?  Education is wonderful!

 

Education is not popular in our Idiocracy.

[Gregory2455]

Spare the education, have you tried it?

There is no need to try it. Other people have and failed.

[William. T]

Look, same species, probably, same genus, maybe. But wasps? Either way, I am still interested in how this turns out for you.

[BugFinder]

Me too, even if there is very little chance of success, cool discoveries are made by pushing the boundaries and doing what others say can't be done.  And even if you fail, that's ok.  Each failure is one step closer to success. 

[William. T]

At least you can feed your ants a punch of protein if this fails. It would be interesting if you do something else, like make a mixed colony from different Pogonomyrmex or Pheidole species. That would be possible and very interesting.

[Huch]

Me too, even if there is very little chance of success, cool discoveries are made by pushing the boundaries and doing what others say can't be done.  And even if you fail, that's ok.  Each failure is one step closer to success. 

 

Yes, this is what I mean. It would just be a cool discovery with no utility or benefit. It is just curiousity. Now my homework this week is to find a wasp nest.

[Crystals]

I have dumped yellow jacket wasp brood into various outworlds over the years. 

Formica (podzolica and aserva), Camponotus herculeanus, and Myrmica.  They considered very good treats.

Golf ball sized nests too close to high traffic areas, we knocked them down.  The wasp queen flew off, and there was no reason not to feed the larvae to my ants.

Sometimes I pulled the one or two larvae present out of the wasp brood cell and dropped them in.  For larger nests, I put the whole wasp comb and brood in.

 

Honest, there was no hesitation on the part of the ants.

 

I have occasionally seen large ant colonies discover a wasp nest and raid it.

[WeatherAnt]

I've fed ants wasp larvae before and they've always eaten it. 

[drtrmiller]

In the tropics, it is not uncommon for army ants to raid wasp nests, while the helpless wasps can only watch.

[dspdrew]

I'm confused. Is this experiment to see if ants will eat brood from other insects, or raise them?

[Huch]

It was to see if they would raise them. But it looks like so many people have fed larvae to ants that it is answered before I even found a nest.