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Well, after a lot of reading and talking to experts, I now believe that this ant is a Pachycondyla harpax worker.
Yesterday I was heading to bed and went to check my Camponotus ligniperda colony and the Pachycondyla harpax worker and I saw she was holding something in her jaws. It was an egg!
There are three possibilities that I am considering:
1. It is only a "feeding" egg and nothing will be born from it, I think this is the most likely possibility so far.
2. The ant did not get fertilized and a male will be born from it. In this case, will the male be able to couple with her?
3. She is a queen. But I don't think this is likely, because I can't see wing markings on her.
Workers in Pachycondyla are often laying eggs when the queen is not around, wich doesn´t mean that the workers are also able to mate.
Antqueen have a organ in which they store sperm that they got from the males. Workers normally don´t have this organ at all or it is at least not active. In some rare cases workers can in deed mate with males and create new workers. Those workers are called gamergates. Examples for ants with gamergates are Harpegnathos saltator, Diacamma spp. and others.
Also the workers often don´t mate with males out of their own nest, there are some exaptations of course, for example Harpegnathos saltator gamergates are proven to ONLY mate with males from the own colony, however queens from this species don´t do so.
In your case the egg will be the one of the male. It might hatch if the worker doesn´t die because of isolation from her colony (that sometimes happen because the ant desperatly tries to find the colony).
The Worker will not be able to start a colony, it will not mate with her own offspring.
I know of some Pachycondyla species in Australia which have gamergates. I´m pretty sure that there are more species but I don´t know if they live in south America.
Hi Kaj
Thanks for the insight. I believe it is just a feeding egg and will be eaten at some point. Is there a way to identify if the egg will hatch a male or if it is indeed just food?
mtrein, there is no reason why she should lay an feeding egg. Those eggs are for brood, and she doesn´t have any larvae. I'm quite sure you'll soon have a male there.
Greetings, Phil