4 replies to this topic

[Works4TheGood]

Do ants in captivity benefit from artificial day/night cycles? In other words, should I turn off the light and heat during night hours?

[prettycode]

Not to hijack your thread, but I'd like to add: for those that use warming apparatuses, do you keep on 24x7, or turn off at night?

[dspdrew]

I'm sure the closer you simulate the conditions in nature, the better it would be for your ants. How much of a benefit simulating lighting conditions is, I have no idea, but I do it myself, because it's more interesting to watch the ants behave the way they do in nature, and simulating the lighting conditions definitely does it.

[drtrmiller]

Anecdotal reports are pretty useless. I don't know of any studies, since 99.999% of research isn't concerned with the effects of keeping ants in artificial conditions, but rather conditions experienced in the natural world.

Since most ants are thermophiles, there would be no benefit to turning off well-applied heat. In fact, this will only lead to condensation issues.

As far as lighting goes, I'd speculate it's only important to maintain a cycle with ant species that are either diurnal or nocturnal. Many commonly kept species are neither, instead relying on other environmental factors such as temperature or moisture to regulate foraging activity.

Edited by drtrmiller, June 14 2016 - 6:30 PM.

[Etherwulf]

Short answer is yes but it's complicated.

 

By offering ants a day/night cycle, the main thing it'll likely affect is foraging patterns especially with diurnal and nocturnal ants. However, a lot of factors play a role as well, such as humidity, temperature, availability of food etc. I did some research into it a while back when constructing a proper day/night cycle for my outworld. I have a few papers kicking around somewhere but here's the one I can find now. 

 

Paper: https://www.dropbox....e Ants.pdf?dl=0

 

Outworld link: http://www.formicult...em/?hl=lighting

Edited by Etherwulf, June 15 2016 - 6:21 AM.