5 replies to this topic

[antKeeper2156]

Hi my Camponotus brasiliensis colony that is around 5 years old started to produce winged males but not winged females.

The Queen is still alive and also some new regular worker females appear.

This behavior is now longer than a year, that is why the Queen must still be alive because if not all the female worker must already be dead because the only live up to 6 months.

The winged males just walk around stupidly and maybe 1% actually manages to fly (thankfully because my formicarium is open)

The growth of the colony is stuck, I even think it is slowly getting slower. That is why I made a big effort to find the queen (as the major workers are almost as big as the queen, it was hard but i could find her and recognize the scars from where the wings were). I read that some ant species produce sterile winged males when the queen dies (apparently the females can produce real eggs where winged males hatch without being fertilizes by a male)

I did not really change the environment ( always heated room temp 20 - 25°C and in winter low humidity because of the heating )

My Question:

Has anyone experienced this behavior and if yes how could you stop it ?

For me my first guess would be that the colony is "stuck" in a bad reproductive cycle. That means naturally in nature at a specific time of the year ( based on the environment parameters such as humidity, temperature, daily hours of sunlight etc...) the normally produce winged males and female that then swarm when the conditions are right and after this the colony goes back to "normal" which means producing female workers.

 

[ReignofRage]

What sort of setup are they in and how much/often are you feeding the colony? It is possible that due to being kept at cooler temps compared to where they originate from, the brood left over from when the queen possibly died could be attributed to some workers being produced post-death of the original queen. It should also be considered that the colony is 5 years old and it could have reached its maximum size! If reaching maximum size is the case, then the colony will focus more resources on producing alates. Sometimes when colonies produce alates, they start with producing only one caste (male or queen) and eventually will start to produce both castes. I would wager my bet on the latter and that the colony did reach its maximum size -- especially considering it's a smaller species from a subgenus (Myrmobrachys) that is not known to have very large colonies.

[antKeeper2156]

Hi,

1.) When the problem that males were produced started they had always a lot of food ( Dubia roaches water and sugar water, as they ignored honey )

In my opinion that was also where I started to recognize a reduction of the population. I then though that the queen is dead and because my old setup was almost impossible to maintain I decided to stop feeding the colony.

The colony size shrank massively and I destroyed my whole old setup got the queen and about 30 workers and moved them into a new setup ( Soil and bark )

2.) The problem with the males is already around 2 years and started before i reduced the colony size and moved them to a new setup, so far not a single winged female.
I am sure that I moved the queen to the new setup because I recognized the wing scars.

3.) The size was definitely way bigger in my original setup. Its hard to guess but there were always around 100 - 500 ants visible on the surface what mean to me that at least 10x the amount of ants exist in the nests ( I had multiple Ytong nests and some soil nests )

 

4.) Now around 1-5 ants are visible, If i lift the top bark I can see around 30-50 Ants and larvae, right now I weekly change the dubia roaches and the sugar/water. I can see 1-3 ants beeing interestet in them when i change the dubias but after a few hours they are gone

[Ernteameise]

Well, in all my colonies (Messor, Temnothorax, Acanthomyrmex) I have made the observation that they alternate which sex alates they produce.

2023 year, my Temnothorax only had males, 2024 it was queens. My Messor only produced females this year. The Acanthomyrmex only produced males.

I think they do this to prevent inbreeding.

Right now, the development of my Acanthomyrmex is on hold, they have only one single large larva left and there is the suspicion that this is a queen alate larva and they put all their effort into her.

So your colony might just put all effort into reproduction right now and bounce bounce back when they are done.

[antKeeper2156]

@Ern

 

Well, in all my colonies (Messor, Temnothorax, Acanthomyrmex) I have made the observation that they alternate which sex alates they produce.

2023 year, my Temnothorax only had males, 2024 it was queens. My Messor only produced females this year. The Acanthomyrmex only produced males.

I think they do this to prevent inbreeding.

Right now, the development of my Acanthomyrmex is on hold, they have only one single large larva left and there is the suspicion that this is a queen alate larva and they put all their effort into her.

So your colony might just put all effort into reproduction right now and bounce bounce back when they are done.

Hi how long did this behavior go on, so far its already 2 Years for me only winged males small colony growth not a single winged female.
 

[Ernteameise]

Are you referring to my Acanthomyrmex colony?

The behavior is ongoing.

Just jump over to my journal, since I am so fascinated by it, I try to update often.

 

As for only males produced....

you sure you got a fertile queen?

Do they found in pleometrosis?

Are they monogyn?

If it is a monogyn species, maybe something needs to be improved, maybe they are missing some key nutrient. But for this, there are far more knowledgeable people on this forum.

From keeping European Formica ants, I know that the production of males is dependent on temperature. The Queen cannot open her sperm valve to fertilize eggs when it is too cold. This is why in wood ant colonies, the males are produced during the colder months, and when it gets warmer, the queen will produce workers and female alates. So there might be an issue with temperature, too.

It is also possible that the queen is fertilized, but she only got a limited amount of sperm, maybe because copulation was interrupted. So she is being very careful with producing workers and puts all her reproductive bets into producing males, so that her weak colony may at least have some chance to spread their genes.

It is also possible there is a genetic cause for this.

In Messor barbarus, it is known that several "lineages" of ants exist.

To get a valid fertile queen, she needs to not only mate with several males, but she needs to mate with different males from different lineages than her own.

If a Messor queen mates only once with a boy of the same lineage, she will only produce some alates and cannot produce workers.

Maybe something similar happened here?

Here is the link to the research paper:

https://core.ac.uk/d...df/84059053.pdf