625 replies to this topic

[CatsnAnts]

Ant Colonies Update:
6/30/2020

Established Colonies:

Temnothorax curvispinosus (1 queen)
This colony is still doing well. Not really anything too exciting about them, as this is probably as big as a single queen colony can get:




Temnothorax curvispinosus (no queen)
Updated in other journal, but is still doing good.

Founding Colonies:

2X Pheidole bicarinata (1 queen)
The first queen with eggs is doing great and has been laying more eggs. The other queen still has yet to lay eggs.

Pheidole bicarinata (3 queen)
These queens are still getting along great and now have a small pile of eggs! I might do an experiment where I keep the colony as a whole, but separate the queens into separate chambers (where only the workers can enter and exit).

2X Pheidole cf. tysoni (1 queen)
That’s right! These queens are actually P. tysoni, not P. morrisii ! I never even thought to consider that P. morrisii’s workers were on the larger scale while these workers look like Solenopsis molesta (so that means all of the colonies I thought were P. morrisii are actually P. tysoni)! Both queens have a small pile of eggs, although I have my doubts that either is fertile:




Solenopsis molesta (3 queen)
Still no eggs

Colobopsis impressa (1 queen)
This queen seems infertile, but time will tell. No eggs yet.

Temnothorax curvispinosus (15 queen)
I found two more of these queens last night, so now I have 15 queens! They are all getting along and have a small pile of eggs. There seems to be three separate groups all huddled near each other.

Temnothorax ambiguus (8 queen)
I found another one of these queens last night, so now it’s an 8 queen setup! I will stop adding queens to my Temnothorax colonies now and will began new test tubes with them. All of these 8 queens are huddled together, but no eggs quite yet.

Formicarium Experiment:

I have decided to put 9 Formica pallidelfulva workers into my formicarium to see if they do OK, and after a few days I will release them back into their colony if no problems arise (although I don’t think any will, nothing should be toxic to them):







(Sorry, my lighting was bad this morning)

Edited by CatsnAnts, July 3 2020 - 1:12 PM.

[TechAnt]

Can't wait to see how it turns out!

[Antkid12]

Nice! 

[CatsnAnts]

Ant Colonies Update:
7/4/2020

Established Colonies:

Temnothorax curvispinosus (1 queen)
Still just chilling and laying eggs at a steady rate.

Temnothorax curvispinosus (no queen)
Good, but I fear that no more eggs are being laid

Founding Colonies:

2X Pheidole bicarinata (1 queen)
Colony 1- Queen 1 will be the queen that currently has eggs. She has a growing pile and seems to be mated and healthy.
Colony 2- Queen 2 will be the queen without eggs. She just keeps pulling at the wet cotton, I don’t have too much hope for her.

Pheidole bicarinata (3 queen)
These three queens have a pretty large egg pile at the moment, and it’s only going to keep growing. Again, I realize that these aren’t polygynous in most circumstances, however, these may be a polygynous “subspecies” as can happen within individual species. I might try separating them later.

2X Pheidole cf. tysoni (1 queen)
Colony 1- Queen 1 will be the queen that layed eggs first. She has a decently sized egg pile (and a neat one, too, might I add) that she constantly takes care of. She, as well as queen 2, both retain their wings which led me to believe that they were both infertile at first. It seems I may have been wrong.
Colony 2- Queen 2 will be the second that layed eggs. She also has a neat pile of eggs and is doing good. I’m very excited about this species because it seems this is not a common queen to find, so we’ll see where this goes!

Solenopsis molesta (3 queen)
Two of these queens were killed and I released the third, so they will no longer have a place in my journal.

Colobopsis impressa (1 queen)
Still chillin’ in her test tube, although she doesn’t seem to like the straw I gave her and instead prefers the open test tube... strange.

Temnothorax curvispinosus (15 queen)
There are officially two groups of queens, each with their own egg pile. The two groups are still fairly close to eachother, so I’m hoping that they will still get along when workers arrive. It seems that 8 Temnothorax queens is all that can fit around an egg pile, so they had to split it up.

Temnothorax ambiguus (8 queen)
EGGGS, and about 7 of them! I have high hopes for this colony to turn out better than last year’s.

New Queens:

Pheidole pilifera (1 queen)
Right as I was ready to go in last night from blacklighting, I found this queen sitting on my blacklight, so I scooped her up. She appears to be Pheidole pilifera from last years identification thread.

Crematogaster sp. (1 queen)
Even more luck, right as I put the P. pilifera queen in her collection container, I found this queen walking on the concrete near our basement door. After a whole night of not finding any queens, it feels nice to have found two new species that I haven’t found this year yet. This queen already has three eggs, and she layed them a mere hour after I put her into her test tube. I’ve never had a queen lay eggs so fast . Here’s some pictures (and a link to the ID thread: https://www.formicul...indiana-742020/):






Formicarium Progress Update:

Formicarium Experiment:
All of the F. pallidelfulva workers are still doing great in my formicarium!

Formicarium Plans:
I plan on building my next formicarium soon, although I am currently working on drawing out a bunch of different sized templates on Procreate for my iPad.

Edited by CatsnAnts, July 6 2020 - 8:16 AM.

[RushmoreAnts]

What killed the two Solenopsis queens?

[CatsnAnts]

What killed the two Solenopsis queens?

The third S. molesta queen. Formiculture literally just crashed right as I posted this, so I couldn’t edit the mistakes or the title , also, why is size=5 smaller than size=4? That’s why the “New Queens:” section was so small, I changed it to 4.9 and that fixed it I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

[RushmoreAnts]

 

What killed the two Solenopsis queens?

The third S. molesta queen.

 

Hmm....... these are polygynous though. Are you sure they didn't die due to not be mated?

[CatsnAnts]

What killed the two Solenopsis queens?

The third S. molesta queen.

Hmm....... these are polygynous though. Are you sure they didn't die due to not be mated?

Lots of polygynous species still have pleometric tendencies, however, they could have died simply from being unmated as well.

Edited by CatsnAnts, July 4 2020 - 1:52 PM.

[RushmoreAnts]

Could be regional too. But personally, I've never had queens of this species fight. And I literally grouped 100 of them together.

[CatsnAnts]

Ant Colonies Update:
7/5/2020

Founding Colonies:

2X Pheidole bicarinata (1 queen)
Colony 1- More eggs! This single queen has about as many eggs as my three queen colony.
Colony 2- She laid an egg! Finally! Currently, she only has one, but she’s keeping a close eye on it.

Pheidole bicarinata (3 queen)
A decent sized egg pile still, all queens are still getting along.

2X Pheidole cf. tysoni (1 queen)
Colony 1- More eggggggs!
Colony 2- More eggggggs! Both of these queens still have their wings.

Colobopsis impressa (1 queen)
No eggs.

Temnothorax curvispinosus (15 queen)
More eggs in each group in the test tube. Occasionally I’ll see a queen transfer to the other group, so it does seem like they are still “one” colony.

Temnothorax ambiguus (8 queen)
More eggggs! These eggs are huge in comparison to the queens, I’ll get pictures if I can, I don’t want to spook my queens this year like I did last year.

Pheidole pilifera (1 queen)
No eggs yet, it’s only been a day.

Crematogaster sp. (1 queen)
More eggs! I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage a crematogaster colony with how huge they can get.

[Antkid12]

Nice! 

[RushmoreAnts]

Colobopsis do best in groups, right?

[CatsnAnts]

Colobopsis do best in groups, right?

Not necessarily. They just take a long time to lay eggs, up to a month even from other journals that I’ve read.

[CatsnAnts]

Pictures!

Temnothorax ambiguus (8 queen)
These queens are huddled over the egg pile, but at least you can see that they’re getting along. These queens are beautiful in my opinion:


Temnothorax curvispinosus (15 queen)
You can see the two groups. The one against the top of the test tube has more eggs:



Pheidole bicarinata (3 queen)
It’s hard to see the egg pile against the white background, but it’s near the queen on the glass behind her abdomen:



Pheidole tysoni (1 queen)
This photo kind of sucks, but I was in too much of a hurry to put her back that I didn’t notice it was blurry *faceplam*. Her eggs are right above her head, but the pile is hardly visible. Next time I’ll figure out a better background color, such as beige:

Edited by CatsnAnts, July 6 2020 - 7:05 AM.

[TechAnt]

Nice!

[CatsnAnts]

New Queen!

Temnothorax pergandei (1 queen)
I found this queen last evening during the daylight hours. She was wondering across a stone, and I had no idea what species she was. Aaron567 helped to identify her as Temnothorax pergandei, and she does indeed look quite strange for a temnothorax queen. I’m really hoping this queen is able to found a colony, because this is such a cool species! I now have three different Temnothorax spp. and three different Pheidole spp. in my possession, what an awesome year so far! Here’s the queen, I had a hard time getting a good shot from her size and speed:






I fed here some honey as well to ensure that she can have the proper reserves to make it to nanitics.

Edited by CatsnAnts, July 6 2020 - 8:14 AM.

[ANTdrew]

I hereby declare you the TemnoTitan!

[CatsnAnts]

I hereby declare you the TemnoTitan!

And I graciously accept Can’t refuse a name from Drew!

[Kaelwizard]

It’s nice to see a journal about cool tiny species like this.

[CatsnAnts]

Formicarium Progress

I have finally figured out a way to add sand onto the walls of my formicarium!

The initial prototype that I posted some time (about a week ago), has had many small revisions and tweaks done to it, and there are many more I plan to do. For starters, I am now using a proportioned mix of sanded and un-sanded grout to increase durability but also keep absorption and ventilation. I am also going to sand down the sharp edges of the glass (I sliced my fingers at least 3 times while working with it), kind of an obvious thing to do. I’m also planning on making the water-reservoir’s enterance a bit steeper so it can be filled up just a little bit fuller. The larger sizes will now contain two water reservoirs, and finally, when pouring it, I plan on trimming down the frame so I can get a perfectly level bottom. (As a bonus, I might paint the outside, what colors would you guys prefer? I’m more of an aesthetic person with whites and grays, but I know a lot of people like vibrant colors such as greens and blues.) Here’s some pictures after I got done adding sand to the walls (it’s still a little wet, but the color should return to a light bone once it drys, I’ll take more photos later once it does (also, this is still the original prototype [that blue tape is to keep sand out of the water reservoir/mesh]):










And of course, I will clean up any rough spots/excess sand. This process did take quite a while, so it might affect the prices slightly. I want your opinions.

Also, all of the F. pallidelfulva workers from the experiment were released back into their wild colony today.

Edited by CatsnAnts, July 7 2020 - 2:29 PM.