11 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

Location:  Morgan Trail, Cleveland National Forest, Lake Elsinore, California.
Habitat:  Chaparral/Oak forest.

Elevation: ~2,856 ft.
Coloration, hue and pattern:  All red.
Length:  6mm - 9mm.
Distinguishing characteristics: Calliper shaped mandibles.

I found these ants in the evening, just before dusk. They were all carrying brood as if they were in the process of moving their nest. They also seem to be extremely aggressive.





















Queen








Nest


Habitat

[dspdrew]

Dr. James Trager:

 

"I have now seen specimens of the two Polyergus colonies found by dspdrew. They belong to a new species I will soon publish that is a specialist "slave-maker" parasite of the common ant Formica moki. Both species are characteristic of the chaparral, oak woodland, and pine-oak woodland in the California coast hills. A couple of nice new locality records for this species!"

[dspdrew]

Here's a picture of the habitat where the Polyergus nest is:



The nest is in a little mound of dirt in the center of this bush:





Here's a picture from across the street where the Formica moki nest is:



Here's the video of the raid. It's not that great, but it's something at least. I think you can see pretty clearly that it is Formica moki (or at least what looks just like it) being raided.



You can see them a little more clearly in this picture:

[dspdrew]

I just found ANOTHER Polyergus nest.  This one was not even close to the first one, but instead, at O'Neill Regional Park in Orange County, CA, 30 miles away from there. Funny thing is I actually found this nest about a month and a half ago, but thought it was just another Formica moki nest. I noticed some of them looked really orangish red, so I thought about collecting a few and posting a question about it on here, but then just decided they had probably recently eclosed and their color hadn't darkened yet. Well I went back today just to see if there were any alates in the nest, and when I saw them this time, I knew exactly what they were. This nest has hundreds of Formica, but I only saw about 7 of the Polyergus.

Nest


Habitat

[dspdrew]

I passed by this trail again 6-2-2013, on the way home from my parents' house and decided to stop there for a little while before it got dark. Again, that same Polyergus nest was just finishing up another raid. I also went about a quarter mile down the trail and saw the tail end of a raid from another Polyergus nest. There was a HUGE amount of them, just like that first nest. I got a little bit of video too. You can see a few of their Formica moki "slaves" at the entrance of their nest as they returned with the loot.

[dspdrew]

Found another Polyergus nest in O'Neill Park, on 6-9-2013, after following the trail of them coming back from an obviously successful raid. I also found a few more Polyergus workers in a totally different location in the park. It seems they might be all over that place.

[dspdrew]

Dr. Trager has now revealed the name of this California species of Polyergus, and it's Polyergus vinosus.

[James C. Trager]

Any way you might post a picture of the queen and work side by side? I've noticed this species seems to have the greatest queen-worker size difference of any in the genus.

[dspdrew]

Unfortunately I don't  have any pictures with both. Maybe they will have another one of those crazy raids with all the queens again next season. If they do I'll make sure to get more pictures.

[Gregory2455]

I just saw this- what happened with that queen?

[dspdrew]

I had a bunch of them, but they all died after just a couple days.

[Gregory2455]

Maybe we can all do better next year.