16 replies to this topic

[mete]

Are the ant colonies sold in the shops captured in wild or "made" in captivity ? Is it possible to breed ants in captivity ?

[Ants_Dakota]

Yes it is possible.

[gcsnelling]

Although a few species are willing to mate in a captive situation most will not and often times even if captive mating does occur it does not produce great success.

[Barristan]

Are the ant colonies sold in the shops captured in wild or "made" in captivity ? Is it possible to breed ants in captivity ?

 

Almost all are captured in the wild. A few exceptions are species like Tetramorium bicarinatum, Pheidole megacephala and other species known for inbreeding.

[RushmoreAnts]

Yes, and many of those including T. bicarinatum breed in the nest as opposed to other captive breeding methods, so in order to sell them they would need to encourage colonies to bud off into new test tubes, assuming you have a years old colony capable of producing alates, which could be a lot more of a hassle than just sticking a queen in a test tube and letting her do the rest.

 

Aaron's Tetramorium bicarinatum Journal (Updated 12/4/20) - Ant Keeping Journals - Ants & Myrmecology Forum (formiculture.com)

Edited by RushmoreAnts, September 21 2024 - 6:36 PM.

[rptraut]

Hello mete;

 

I keep two kinds of ants that have multiple queens, Myrmica americana and Tapinoma sessile.    I've observed that each individual queen will have her own area where she lays and tends her eggs and small larvae.   This area could be a corner of a chamber or an area outside of the main nest.   I provide them with small bottles or tubes for this purpose when I build the formicarium.   In the setup below you can see two small bottles covered by the red filter, look closely and you can see the eggs in the front one.   Usually only one queen occupies each small bottle, it's interesting to see how many eggs one queen can lay.   

 

 

 

 

 

I've also attached small "founding cubes" onto a larger setup, like the cube attached above on the left side.    Queens move into them for the season and lay eggs; once the eggs have hatched, they're taken to a communal larvae area where they're reared with all the others.    For diapause these queens and workers have always returned to the main nest if I leave them connected.   I've also detached the founding cube from the main nest during the season and the queens and workers have started a new colony, like the budding previously mentioned.

 

I strongly suspect that mating takes place within the nest for both these types of ants, although I don't know that for sure.   They've had mating flights; but they also appear to get rid of old queens and replace them with new queens.   My Myrmica ants, in particular, seem to do a cull of old queens and workers in spring and fall.    I'd be interested to hear if someone knows for sure about this type of thing.

RPT

 

 

 

[mete]

A follow up question. Are the colonies sold with some workers (lets say up to 20 or so) always in their first year or can it be their second or even later years ?

[Barristan]

A follow up question. Are the colonies sold with some workers (lets say up to 20 or so) always in their first year or can it be their second or even later years ?

 

That depends on the species. If a species has nuptial flights late in the year, they won't found in the same year but after hibernation, so they'd be in second year with 20 workers. It also depends on how early you buy your colony. If you buy it shortly after hibernation ended the colony might still have only around 20 workers. Then there could also be the case that something happened to the colony so it lost a lot of workers. So theoretically a colony with 20 workers could be 5 years and only has so few because it lost the rest.

Ask the shop they should know when the queens had their nuptial flight.

 

If you want a good quality indicator you have to look at the brood. Almost all ant species hibernate with brood (larvae), so a colony with 20 workers should always have some brood. If you bought a colony with 20 workers but no brood, something must have happened to the brood. Exception are Formica spp. they don't hibernation with any brood, so it is normal to have 0 brood during and shortly after hibernation.

Edited by Barristan, September 22 2024 - 1:26 AM.

[RushmoreAnts]

I can confirm, winter begins early here, and my Formica already stopped laying eggs. In this first season my three colonies in the fusca and pallidefulva groups will end up with 8, 11, and 20 workers by hibernation, respectively.

[UtahAnts]

Staged nuptial flights have been done before. If I remember correctly, in this study, Leptothorax queens and drones milling around in an outworld were moved to holding containers and seen mating after raising the temperature/humidity.

 

I once read a study on Pogonomyrmex flights that mentioned a lab-based nuptial flight: 2/10 queens raised from pupae flew with drones from a previous wild flight given a holding bucket with twigs, a nearby fan blowing 16 km/h, temperature of 34 C, and the relative humidity 52% (saturation deficit of 19.2 mm Hg). Two 100-watt bulbs were 2 meters above the bucket, along with a west facing window. The two queens flew with the drones to window, mated, and proceeded to dig into substrate.

[RushmoreAnts]

I wonder if it has something to do with how the queens mate: in the air or on the ground. I would assume species which mate on the ground would be easier to stage than those who mate many feet in the air.

[cooIboyJ]

Brachymyrmex patagonicus mate on the ground, and around a year ago I managed to successfully breed some. I had two test tubes, and I put an unmated queen found from tearing into one of their nests before nuptial flight season, and a male found in the same way. I had to tear into two different nests so the queens don't mate with their brothers. I put the male In the test tube with the queen and waited awhile. Eventually the male died and the queen started laying eggs not too long afterwards. I had to let her go, but I had a Brachymyrmex patagonicus colony in my backyard for a while. But they died because of the heat once summer came (this all happened in spring). I hope this helps!

[Canadian anter]

From my personal experience, most ground-mating species are possible to mate in captivity, and (as far as our ants are), most of the Aphaenogaster we sell are captive bred.

 

However, most of our ants are from wild collected queens (I imagine this is the case for most shops)

[mete]

Do some species mate only in the air and some only on the ground ? or all species (except special cases like wingless virgin queens) mate in the air but some also can mate on the ground ?

[mbullock42086]

i mated odontomachus desertorum, pheidole cerebrosior/spadonia and it was pretty easy.  well the latter two were, desertorum took some time to actually mate.

myrmycinae in general seem to be alot easier with the exception of leafcutters which are light temp and humidity triggered. 

[bmb1bee]

i mated odontomachus desertorum, pheidole cerebrosior/spadonia and it was pretty easy.  well the latter two were, desertorum took some time to actually mate.

myrmycinae in general seem to be alot easier with the exception of leafcutters which are light temp and humidity triggered. 

Leafcutters like Atta and Acromyrmex probably need to mate in the air while flying, so captive breeding for them would be almost impossible. That being said, you could work against the odds by building a 5,000 gallon terrarium or something lol.

[mbullock42086]

 

i mated odontomachus desertorum, pheidole cerebrosior/spadonia and it was pretty easy.  well the latter two were, desertorum took some time to actually mate.

myrmycinae in general seem to be alot easier with the exception of leafcutters which are light temp and humidity triggered. 

Leafcutters like Atta and Acromyrmex probably need to mate in the air while flying, so captive breeding for them would be almost impossible. That being said, you could work against the odds by building a 5,000 gallon terrarium or something lol.

 

 they don't need to fly to mate.  i collected hundreds of males and females and mated most of them inside my house.  the actual mating condition itself requires the trigger, but once they're riled up they're easily mated.

they don't actually mate in the air, what happens is males hover in a swarm, and females locate them, then crash into a male, and they hit the ground, and a bunch of other males cluster all over.  the actual mating is done on the ground.


 the trigger IMO isn't even the actual rain but moreso how cool it is the rest of the night into the morning caused by evaporative cooling.