7-13-2013

I found these Solenopsis xyloni queens at O'Neill Regional Park in Southern California, on June 26th 2013, wandering around on a paved road next to a large amount of S. xyloni nests.



Originally I had five of them, but one died, I gave one to my boss, and I released one, so now I have two. They started laying eggs two days later, and right now, both have pretty large piles of larvae.

Update 7-23-2013

Both colonies have at least ten workers now. The first one eclosed two days ago.

Update 9-17-2013
 
For some reason both of the two original colonies got up to around 40 workers and then suddenly had a mass die-off one day; first one, and then the other about two weeks later. One of those colonies completely died, queen and all. The other one now has just a few workers and practically no brood.
 
Since the last update, I have also added three more colonies to my collection. One of these was found in Murrieta, California, on 8-17-2013, walking on the floor of my parents' kitchen. So far it has a decent amount of workers, and a fairly large pile of brood. The other two were found on 8-26-2013, one in Palm Desert, California, and the other near Joshua Tree National Park in California.
 

 

 

 
Neither of these two have workers yet, but they both have very large piles of brood.

Update 9-21-2013

Both queens from the Mojave Desert just had plenty of workers eclose today.

Nice coloration.

How large do their colonies usually get?

Nice coloration.

How large do their colonies usually get?

Quite large in the wild, but as for captivity, I'm not sure, because most all of my ant colonies were started this season.

Update 10-6-2013

These four colonies were all doing well, including the one with hardly any workers left after a sudden die off. Today though, one of the colonies I got from the queen I found in the Mojave Desert just completely died off, queen and all. Something obviously poisoned them all, because it looked the way it would have looked if someone had sprayed them with Raid. The day before I fed them a termite I caught during a Drywood Termite nuptial flight that happened around my apartment. The weird thing is, I gave some of those termites to a few other colonies of ants, including some of the other S. xyloni colonies, and I haven't had any other deaths. The only thing I can figure is that the specific termite I gave them was poisoned and not the others, or it was caused by something else, possibly the same thing that killed off so much of the first two colonies this happened to. I do know that whatever is killing them, seems to really only affect S. xyloni for some reason.

Here's a video of this colony the way I found it today.

Update 11-20-2013

All three colonies seem to be doing just fine now. The one that almost died off has about 15 workers now from the brood of the last colony that died entirely. The queen has even produced a little pile of her own brood now too. The other two colonies are growing much larger now and probably both have over 100 workers now. in addition to that, they have really big piles of brood. Below is a video of one of the larger colonies and the dead scorpion they've been munching on for two weeks now.

That is a nice sized pile of brood.

Surely that scorpian has dried out by now, right?  Or are they one the "goat ants" that will eat anything?

That is a nice sized pile of brood.

 

Surely that scorpian has dried out by now, right?  Or are they one the "goat ants" that will eat anything?

Yeah, it's pretty dry, but a lot of my ants love dried out food. They continue to chew on it until there's nothing but a pile of powder left.

Wow.  I have never seen "ant dust" before. 

None of my colonies do anything like that.

The only ones I've seen do it so far, out of all my colonies, are Crematogaster, Solenopsis, and Pheidole.

Update 12-14-2013

I sold one of the larger colonies today. One colony of S. xyloni that size is enough to take care of anyway.

Wow.

No species where I live grows that fast.  I think I may be happy about that fact...

I can only imagine how fun cleaning their outworld must be. 

Drew - I let my Solenopsis xyloni free about a month ago. They got pretty much into the thousands and had no more room for them. Completely overcrowded two test tubes and a large tupperware.

I live in a small apartment and even if I did build a large formicarium they would have outgrown it pretty fast.

I have a colony of Pogonomyrmex and C. clarithorax that are doing quite well also, but growing nowhere near as fast.

Went back to check on them in the wild and they seem to have settled in quite nicely under a rock.

Haha, yeah, I was actually starting to think about getting rid of mine too. They are just so active, and they never stop eating. There's always at least 50 of them at a time digging and digging at the cotton plugging the hole in the lid, and I'm afraid one day they're gonna pull it out while I'm at work.

Have you been stung yet?

Edited by LAnt, January 23 2014 - 5:31 PM.