On Wednesday, after being told multiple species were flying in the desert, I went out to see if I could catch some queens. I went to the location suggested by dspdrew, which is close to the intersection of Mountain View, and El Mirage Rd. Sure enough, there was a large puddle and founding chambers everywhere. There were also some mature nests of Pogonomyrmex rugosus, and Messor pergandei. I was at the location from around 5:30pm to 9:30pm, already being dark when I left. I caught only about one queen for every three founding chambers I dug up, but then again I was not digging so deep. I finished the day with:
8 Pogonomyrmex rugosus queens,
1 Forelius pruinosus queen,
1 Solenopsis xyloni queen,
1 Pogonomyrmex californicus (bicolor) queen.
I also got some pictures of some of the mature colonies.
Pogonomyrmex rugosus.
Nest entrance:
Messor pergandei.
Here is a P.rugosus colony being raided by an M.pergandei colony:
You can see three Messor on the bottom of this picture, and the P.rugosus guards are standing like a wall guarding their nest entrance.
I came back to check on it later, and the first line of P.rugosus guards were overrun, and were being carried off by Messor raiders, but a second one beat back the messor.
By then my camera had run out of batteries.
The P.rugosus ended up beating back the messor, the overall battle lasted around one and a half hour.
Edited by Gregory2455, August 26 2014 - 10:09 PM.