This colony is doing fairly well, but they are growing at an excruciatingly slow pace for such small ants; to be expected with this strange species, I suppose. I ended up moving them forcefully into a new petri dish setup a while back. For the first few days, they insisted on living in the foraging arena, but they eventually relocated into the nest. The worker count is almost up to 30, but with only a very small pile of pupae and eggs. They have been feeding on honey/bee-pollen/royal-jelly mixture, THA ant juice, and maple syrup, along with fruit flies and crickets (note that they will only consume the liquids of insects), although they rarely show much enthusiasm for any of these food sources.
T. sessile truly is a puzzle of a species. The fact that they thrive so well and breed so prolifically in natural habitats suggests to me that there is something very important missing from the captive environment. I hope that the answer is simple.
Edited by Myrmicinae, July 15 2015 - 12:27 PM.
