4 replies to this topic

[AnthonyP163]

so I was reading an article, it said that since Temnothorax typically nest in acorns, they're survival rate isn't very high. The study show that 14 colonies hibernating above ground in their acorns lost a good amount of workers, and the ones that were underground only lost a few. These scientists put the ants underground though. I'm starting to think that Temnothorax arent very common by me because of how cold our winters get and how much snow we get. with windshield it was -29 a week or two ago, we have about a foot of snow. 

 

So if you happen to be up north a bit, and you find a Temnothorax colony, be grateful, because it seems they're not very common.

[Loops117]

oh man. I was finding colonies by the boat load while up in the U.P. of michigan.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

During the winter (here in NJ) I once found a colony nesting in a small twig, that was so rotted and brittle it collapsed when I touched it. I only found the colony because when I stepped on it, it flattened and crumbled without any sound instead of snapping as typically happens. We had recently gotten 4 inches of snow the week before which had melted by this time. The ants were all gathered in a tight huddle around the queen and brood. I can only surmise that the species was extremely cold hardy to survive in such a frail location. There wasn't even leaf litter on top. It was a bed of moss in a forest clearing.

 

Colonies nesting in acorns likely get an added layer of oak leaves in the winter, which typically take more than two years to decompose.. This added layer of leaf littler helps insulate them along with making their colonies much harder to find.

[Mdrogun]

This theory makes absolutely no sense. If the Temnothorax colonies that nested in acorns were commonly killed off or lost a lot of workers natural selection would take over and Temnothorax would evolve into a ground nesting species. Like MrILoveTheAnts mentioned it's likely they have a very high temperature tolerance and get insulation from leaves and other forest litter. I would also imagine that there are plenty of risks from nesting in the soil we don't even think about like mites, having the ground freeze, other colonies, etc. In general, an ant species that has tiny colonies (One of the largest wild colonies ever recorded had 339 workers), tiny workers, and is not very active is going to be extremely tough to find unless they are in high concentrations.

Edited by Mdrogun, December 23 2016 - 5:04 AM.

[noebl1]

I can't find the link at the moment, but one paper I found on a University site mentioned Temnothorax they believe may use glycerol and allows they to survive very cold temperatures like camponotus.  They also noted they tended to have very high death rates, and Antwiki mentioned they are highly flexible nest/queen-wise (I posted this to the mirror of this post, hopefully @dspdrew will merge the treads and I'll delete this post as a dupe).

 

From antwiki.org:

"Nests are located in preformed cavities in structures found in the litter, e.g., in small sticks or nuts. Temnothorax curvispinosus is facultatively polydomous and their nesting arrangements vary with season. In the productive summer months, colonies can fragment and be arranged across numerous nest sites. These vary in queen number, from multiple queens to those that only have workers and brood."

 

"Queen number can vary by colony and season. New colonies are founded by pleoemetrosis and new queens are likely adopted into existing nests. The latter is evident from the presence within populations of both monogynous and polygonous nests. Reproductive queens contain 8 ovarioles.

Worker reproduction does occur with some male production possible from worker derived eggs. Reproductive workers contain 2 ovarioles.

New queens are produced in some queenless nests. These are presumed to be nests that are separated from a queenright nests or from a nest that had earlier lost its queen(s)."

Edited by noebl1, December 23 2016 - 8:05 AM.