To start I will address a consistent part of your post which is that you have incorrectly determined that I am arguing for an unrealistic and absurd application of exhaustive scientific definition and explanation for literally every singe statement made in any context and at all times on any subject. I am not doing this, you are very mistaken, and so I will ignore the parts of your post where you are criticizing my argument on this basis (which is in a lot of places). If I ignore any of your bulletin points this is probably the reason.
Ant keeping is not myrmecology. It is a hobby, not a science, and the fact that many myrmecologists sometimes practice ant keeping as part of their work does not make the two terms synonymous. Myrmecologists are under no obligation to promote or educate the broader ant-keeping community, nor are hobbyists under any obligation to practice the scientific method in their own ant keeping at their own expense (which would be substantial if it were to have actual scientific relevance). Considering that the bulk of the peer-reviewed work I've seen addresses next to nothing on the subject of ant keeping suggests that many myrmecologists are likely opposed to the extraction and confinement of queens from their natural environments on any kind of substantial scale in the first place, anecdotally speaking.
I never claimed that Myrmecologists are obligated to engage with hobbyists, nor did I claim that hobbyists should hold themselves to the same standards as actual Myrmecologists. The purpose of shifting community standards towards a more rigorous approach, even if all that means at a bare minimum is recording and posting the simple and easy observations as I have previously described, is to introduce evidence to back up the efficacy of those techniques that are constantly repeated by newer members despite the lack of even a single detailed account of those techniques working in a way that would rule out other factors. This means that you can have hobbyists going through the effort of performing techniques recommended to them with no basis in actual reality simply because they were instructed to by other members with no original source of decent testing nor a rigorous enough personal set of observations to be able to add anything to the evaluation of the method one way or another. These techniques can be at best a waste of time and at worst actively detrimental. You are incorrectly conflating my desire and strong advocacy for higher standards with me demanding that all hobbyists conform to the highest professional standards.
- Unlike the scientific community, hobbyists are allowed to establish canon based on anecdotal consensus. That is, unless Reacker can provide scientific evidence to demonstrate that this is not the case.
Of course hobbyists are allowed to do this. The problem with them doing this without higher standards is that it has the potential to generate very bad advice that never gets corrected by information from reality. You can end up with an echo chamber where the same unsupported pieces of advice go back and forth between new members with the transmission of these ideas being unrelated to whether or not they actually work. If the goal of keeping ants is to do a good job of keeping ants, then it should be self-evident why it is essential that we verify theory with evidence. This is sorely lacking at the moment for many techniques.
- The fact that some members of the community seek to profit from commercializing the hobby makes the hobby no less casual or cheap. That's a supply-side fallacy that has no merit in a hobby that can be enjoyed at next to no expense. The hobby allows for a tidy profit for some at best, at least until prices can compete with what people can do on their own with little difficulty.
This one single line was a single semi-joking aside that I threw in based on subjective personal opinion and while you can argue that as a writing style it was not necessary to throw in it has no bearing at all to the main point of my post. That you chose to pick it apart and assume that I am indeed committing this fallacy rather than asking for clarification before making your judgement to an inconsequential series of twelve words indicates that rather than attempting to engage with the subject at hand you have instead decided to ungenerously assign to me a deficit in basic reasoning skills. Are you so deeply offended and desperate to pick apart my argument that you will grab on to any unrelated words of mine and interpret them in the harshest way possible?
- In regards to sterilization: no side-by-side comparison is necessary. We can thank the scientific community for letting us know that ants (like most organisms) are susceptible to parasites and disease. Sterilization is a reasonable preventative measure with or without the comparative studies suggested.
A side by side comparison is indeed necessary if you are going to advocate for this practice. While it is undeniable that ants and most organisms are as you say susceptible to parasites and disease, there is no evidence that various types of unprocessed media pose an actual threat to a captive ant colony.
- Reacker complains that these myths of ant keeping are formed by community consensus within a community with significant turnover and short-term enthusiasm. The only consequence of this is that it takes longer for solid contributors to foster sound consensus. Too bad, so sad. Time takes time. If you want things done more efficiently, pay for it.
This entire bulletin point is ridiculous. Firstly I am not claiming that these myths are formed by short term enthusiasts, just that they are propagated by short term enthusiasts who cite no evidence and provide only useless anecdotes in support of them. The consequence of this is that you have new members subjecting their usually highly limited supply of queens and colonies to procedures that may be at best innocuous and are at worst actively detrimental to colony success. This is the difference between success and failure hinging on unverified techniques passed around without verification. There are potentially real consequences to this unvetted information, not just more time as you say. The rest of this bulletin point is just....stupid. I don't know how else to describe it.
- Reacker complains that even the most successful members of the English-speaking ant-keeping community are plagued with failure, and too often fail to care for a colony for the duration of its natural lifespan. This raises questions:
- Where is the scientific evidence that demonstrates that this only occurs for the English-speaking community?
I have no idea about other language communities as I don't speak any other languages to a sufficient degree of fluency to make any judgments and as such I have chosen not to do so.
- Where is the scientific evidence that demonstrates that most natural ant colonies survive the full duration of a queen's potential lifespan?
I am not claiming that most natural ant colonies survive the full duration of a queen's potential lifespan, nor am I claiming that most captive colonies would survive that full duration either.
- Where is the scientific evidence that an undomesticated animal (unlike domesticated animals like cats and dogs) should be expected to achieve its natural lifespan in captivity?
Redundant.
- Given that any myrmecologist will tell you that the vast majority of queens in nature fail to even begin to establish a colony and the fact that every exposed surface of the planet isn't crawling with ants, where is the scientific evidence to suggest that ants have a higher failure rate in captivity?
This point is so confused as to come off as being ingenuous. Queens in nature are subject to a high degree of predation before they reach whatever counts as a secure state where they can begin to raise their first workers. Hobbyist ant keepers capture queens and place them in enclosures that are intended to be the functional equivalent of this secure state. The survival rate of all queens that fly away from a given colony to mate is irrelevant. I am claiming that there is a startling lack of long term journals or other documentation showing that English speaking hobbyists have even a single time managed to raise a colony from a queen of any species under any conditions from colony creation to an age where based on data gathered from the lifespans of wild colonies you could make a fair case that the queen had managed to live to an age that could be considered the natural lifespan of that species.
I fully support arguments for science, but it's hard to get behind an argument built on none of it.
You accuse me of committing logical fallacies but nearly your entire post was dedicated to blowing down strawmen. You claim that my argument is built without science but you fail to understand that the burden of proof for a claim (such as an technique being effective) is on the claimant, not the person doubting the claim. You say you support arguments built on science, but I suggest that you spend more time supporting your own personal development of reading comprehension.
), is that this site and the overall community in the ant-keeping AND myrmecology community is starting to degrade and become full of mostly immature an/or uneducated children. The myrmecology side is filling up up with people over from the ant-keeping side, therefore we have had some changes in the general expectations of this website and myrmecology community.
