9 replies to this topic

[Dreamer]

CLICK ON PICTURES FOR FULL SIZE IMAGES

 

After having three of my colonies die over winter I decided to get two new ones - a Lasius Flavus direct replacement queen and something new, but European with a hibernation cycle. I read about Temnothorax Nylanderi and several people were saying they were timid or ran from other ants. That made me wonder if they could share my planned outworld with the Lasius Flavus and Prenolepis Nitens? Probably not, but it's something interesting to aim for Additionally if my Prenolepis Nitens queen does die, I'll have a back up for sharing with my Flavus.

28th April
I chose the most uninventive name (Acorn colony) because they actually came in an acorn, which is brilliant! I had ordered a queen with 5-10 workers, so it was great to see a couple climbing around outside the acorn when I had a look at them in the light. They are about the same size as Lasuis Niger and a beautiful colour:


My new (and probably much better) way of starting off queens and small colonies is to keep them in their original test tube and just connect a new one with additional water and food. That way I can potentially swap the food and water if needed without disturbing the colony and the colony can also move if they chose to or water in the original test tube gets too low.

I put some honey, marmite, sugar and a fruit fly in the test tube and it was exciting to see after about half an hour that two workers ventured in to explore:


A third one joined them and they all went for the honey:


A couple more workers came out, one trying the marmite (on the left) and another having a go at the fruitfly (to the right). At this point I suspected that I might have more than 10 workers, with 5 having ventured out so quickly:


Then things got wild


At their peak the colony had 23 workers out that I could see and they spent about 3-4 hours just gorging themselves on honey. Their gasters got noticably bigger, going from a rounded shape to a pointed shape and elogating the most at the end. A couple had some of the protein in the marmite and fruitfly, but as you can see above, honey was by far the favourite. It was amazing to see this as none of my other colonies is at this size and able to swarm like this. After a few hours the numbers dropped to 3-4 feeding outside the acorn.

It's a bit of a shame that I can't see how the lavave and pupae will be growing, but it's exciting to have a colony that is so large and developed. Looking forward to trying it with new foods

Edited by Dreamer, April 28 2018 - 3:46 PM.

[Dreamer]

4th May
Disaster (or naive inexperience) strikes! The combination of honey and condensation proved fatal for about 14 of my Nylanderi



In my eagerness to make sure the colony had access to extra water and food I gave them an 'outworld' testtube to explore, to prevent some of the dehydration two of my other colonies had. Alas good intentions plus condensation led to a deadly pool of tasty honey water and each ant that leaned too far to sample the tasty liquid...

I decided to remove the water tube and replace it with a completely dry testtube with only fruitflies, ant bodies and sugar crystals. Safety first people.


9th May
Coincidentally a few days later a parcel arrived for me with some excellent acrylic boxes that I was going to convert into mini outworlds. They are about 8cm x 6cm x 5cm, so they are tall enough for my byformica feeders that I got at the end of last year I've put in some white sand to adsorb any condensation and included a feeder with honey water and a food tray with jam and marmite.

[Dreamer]

May 24th

The Nylanderi are slow and small, but they do like to explore confidently, more so than Lasius Niger or C.Barbaricus, but probably not as much as M.Barbarus. Here is one out and about:

 

Here is the current set up, small and simple:

 

There are usually 3-5 ants out at any one time exploring

 

June 6th

No real change, they are still exploring, so I wanted to give them something to eat - so fruitflies and honey Here is one ant exploring the new food.

 

 

June 8th

Still very active. Not sure if it is because they are hungry or the colony size is big enough for them to need quite a bit of food. They've been having a go at one of the five fruit flies and they've been enjoying some honey water:

[AntsAreUs]

My Temnothorax are always hungry. I would assume it is because of their small size and that they can't hold food very well. I just feed them small bits every 1-2 days.

[Jadeninja9]

Nice colony!

[Dreamer]

June 12th

I am not sure of the colony's size as they are always hidden away inside the Acorn, but colonies only seem to grow to about 100 individuals from what I have read online. Considering that they are very active with 6-8 workers out everyday. That's probably 10-15% of the workforce. They do not seem to be interested in the fruitflies, with only the occasional worker having a look at one. They have also mainly ignored the protein jelly. They are currently even ignoring the honey!

 

At night the number of workers out appears to drop to 3-4, so they seem to be more active in the day. If my Lasius Flavus colony continues to grow quickly I may be able to link the two via a third outworld later this year, we'll see.

[Karma]

 

June 12th

I am not sure of the colony's size as they are always hidden away inside the Acorn, but colonies only seem to grow to about 100 individuals from what I have read online. Considering that they are very active with 6-8 workers out everyday. That's probably 10-15% of the workforce. They do not seem to be interested in the fruitflies, with only the occasional worker having a look at one. They have also mainly ignored the protein jelly. They are currently even ignoring the honey!

 

At night the number of workers out appears to drop to 3-4, so they seem to be more active in the day. If my Lasius Flavus colony continues to grow quickly I may be able to link the two via a third outworld later this year, we'll see.

 

I love temnothorax but it kinda sucks that there isn't more well known ant keeping knowledge for them, the most of what I have learned is from scientific articles and journals on the species, but I did find out some interesting things that may be useful to know for you.

 

It is widely assumed that these ants have fairly small colonies (50 - 200 ants mostly) however there is a lot of ongoing research that kind of debunks these previous assumptions. The first thing that has been discovered is that many temnothorax have "satellite nests" meaning a colony can have several different nests spaced out from each other (this is common since many acorns can be scattered in a small area, all belonging to the same queen/colony) with some recorded colony sizes well over 1000.

 

The other thing is that since most wild temnothorax colonies live above ground they experience the harshest elements of winter which causes the majority of the colony to die off over winter and then replenish over the spring and summer period without really growing much bigger. It's also believed that due to the lack of food and high competitiveness between differing colonies, most colonies lack the resources to really grow to large numbers.

 

So it is theorized that in captivity given an excess amount of nesting space and food, colonies can grow much beyond their potential. A captive laboratory colony grew to over 600 ants in the span of 3 years. So you could be lucky and have your colony reach much larger numbers.

 

Another useful tip I should share is for you to not worry if they aren't accepting food as several tests done on leptothorax and temnothorax found that these ants can survive almost an entire year without food, so it's safe to say it would be difficult to accidentally starve your ants.

Edited by Karma, June 18 2018 - 2:41 PM.

[Dreamer]

 

 

June 12th

I am not sure of the colony's size as they are always hidden away inside the Acorn, but colonies only seem to grow to about 100 individuals from what I have read online. Considering that they are very active with 6-8 workers out everyday. That's probably 10-15% of the workforce. They do not seem to be interested in the fruitflies, with only the occasional worker having a look at one. They have also mainly ignored the protein jelly. They are currently even ignoring the honey!

 

At night the number of workers out appears to drop to 3-4, so they seem to be more active in the day. If my Lasius Flavus colony continues to grow quickly I may be able to link the two via a third outworld later this year, we'll see.

 

I love temnothorax but it kinda sucks that there isn't more well known ant keeping knowledge for them, the most of what I have learned is from scientific articles and journals on the species, but I did find out some interesting things that may be useful to know for you.

 

It is widely assumed that these ants have fairly small colonies (50 - 200 ants mostly) however there is a lot of ongoing research that kind of debunks these previous assumptions. The first thing that has been discovered is that many temnothorax have "satellite nests" meaning a colony can have several different nests spaced out from each other (this is common since many acorns can be scattered in a small area, all belonging to the same queen/colony) with some recorded colony sizes well over 1000.

 

The other thing is that since most wild temnothorax colonies live above ground they experience the harshest elements of winter which causes the majority of the colony to die off over winter and then replenish over the spring and summer period without really growing much bigger. It's also believed that due to the lack of food and high competitiveness between differing colonies, most colonies lack the resources to really grow to large numbers.

 

So it is theorized that in captivity given an excess amount of nesting space and food, colonies can grow much beyond their potential. A captive laboratory colony grew to over 600 ants in the span of 3 years. So you could be lucky and have your colony reach much larger numbers.

 

Another useful tip I should share is for you to not worry if they aren't accepting food as several tests done on leptothorax and temnothorax found that these ants can survive almost an entire year without food, so it's safe to say it would be difficult to accidentally starve your ants.

 

Thank you! That was super interesting and very useful!

July 1st

They have been even more active and took the 2 fruit flys I gave them straight away this week. I also gave them some marshmellow, which they ignored. Finally I gave them some left over digestive biscuit, which they feasted on with about 8+ workers out digging into it! Remarkably the colony now seems to sometimes move out of the acorn, so I've been able to see lavae and what I think was the queen for the first time  I managed to get this shot below through the dirt on the test tube.

 

There are around 10 smaller lavae and some bigger ones in there too. Hopefully that should mean the colony will grow over the next 2 months They are running low on water now in their test tube with the acorn, so I've already attached another test tube to the outworld with more water in. I'm curious to see if they move across and leave their acorn as it starts to dry out over the next couple of months. It would be great to get a better view of them.

 

On a behaviour note, these guys are particularly good at climbing and seem to be attracted to lights when I am opening the top of their outworld (I have to be quite quick).

[Canadian anter]

[quote name="Karma" post="94918" timestamp="1529361455"][quote name="Dreamer" post="94909" timestamp="1529359071"]
June 12th
Another useful tip I should share is for you to not worry if they aren't accepting food as several tests done on leptothorax and temnothorax found that these ants can survive almost an entire year without food, so it's safe to say it would be difficult to accidentally starve your ants.[/quote]

My Temnothorax colonies always ate the most. While Crematogaster would turn moths into dust, they left no trace at all. Mine starved after only a week of no food. In my experience, these eat a lot and can't really store food.

[Karma]

[quote name="Dreamer" post="94909" timestamp="1529359071"]
June 12th
Another useful tip I should share is for you to not worry if they aren't accepting food as several tests done on leptothorax and temnothorax found that these ants can survive almost an entire year without food, so it's safe to say it would be difficult to accidentally starve your ants.

My Temnothorax colonies always ate the most. While Crematogaster would turn moths into dust, they left no trace at all. Mine starved after only a week of no food. In my experience, these eat a lot and can't really store food.

That's weird, I'm not saying I am an expert on this or anything but if you want to know where I learned some of these facts here is a summary of the scientific article I read through https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC2408869/I'd encourage you to read the results and discussion section as that stuff is really  the proof of the facts and where the interesting stuff is. I can quote some things that in the results section that explain my understanding of the topic.

 

"Under the laboratory conditions most colonies survived four months of total starvation without a significant decline (relative to the control colonies) in colony population. Furthermore, most starved colonies were still alive at the end of the eight month starvation period, although the numbers of brood items and workers were dramatically reduced at this point. However, eight months exceed the annual activity period in most habitats of T. rugatulus."  "Thus, we conclude that most well-fed colonies are theoretically able to survive a whole season without food."

 

"T.rugatulus has no specialized food storing mechanism as found in other ants (Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990) but the results of this study suggest that internal resources and brood are effective mediators of starvation resistance. The initial amount of brood did ultimately not predict the colonies’ resistance to starvation because the amount of brood continued to increase to various degrees in most colonies over the first two months of starvation. This indicates that workers and/or queens were able to use internal resources to produce additional brood without access to food for a prolonged period of time (Børgesen, 2000)."

 

Sorry for the long quotes and post, I just find these kinds of things really interesting.