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I collected eight F. rufa queens about 3 weeks ago when some local nests were doing the mating flights. They were all placed in individual test tubes with moist cotton (like how they arrive from Antstore), and a bit of food. Three of them are now dead, and what I noticed is that all eight have attacked the cotton, tearing bits off with their jaws, and spraying it with formic acid so that within a few days it had gone black.
When I opened the tubes of the dead ones, they smelt like a school chemistry laboratory; I think the dead ones have sprayed so much formic acid that they have poisoned themselves.
Several of the queens have laid eggs, which is a good sign, but they don't seem very attentive to them compared to my Lasius niger queens; I'm starting to get the feeling that Formicas don't make very good mothers.
Anyway, I was just wondering, given all the acid spraying and egg-inattention, if these are particularly hard ants to keep? I looked on the ant database and it says "attitude class 4 (impossible)" which is a bit worrying, although I assume it's a babel-fish type translation from the German.
They're so damn aggressive it's kind of funny, like every time they see my fingers near the test tube they adopt this attack posture with their jaws open, but I'm starting to think they're so aggressive that they basically just go ape-shit in a test tube and spray acid everywhere until they die.
Any thoughts?
Formica rufa queens are temporary social parasites, this means they must have a few adopted workers (usually Formica fusca or other Serviformica) to survive and raise the brood. You should know this before picking them.
All Formica are quite nervous, and F. rufa are extremally agressive, and they have ability to spray acid instead of only pouring it. They also have good sights and react to movement. This means they can intoxicate themselves in formicarium, when upset. The formicarium for them must be very calm or covered with red foil.
And another thing is legal status - F. rufa is protected in many European states, and I don't know if keeping them is legal in UK - probably not.
I don't think keeping them is impossible, but it is very hard indeed. After all, you won't have fully developed rufa colony (hundreds thousands workers) and they won't build a 1m anthill in your room, and the small colony don't differ much from F. sanguinea, which is a lot easier.
F rufa don't have any legal protection in the UK (see here for example). I was aware that they can employ temporary social parasitism as a means of starting a new colony, but I was under the impression that they didn't always do this (e.g. I have read that it is also common for them to return to their own nest after mating as they are polygynous, but I guess in that case they would have help from existing workers anyway).
I am endeavoring to stress them as little as possible; they were all originally placed in individual test tubes, that were then covered with a cloth and not disturbed for two weeks, and when I checked on them three were dead. We'll see what happens with the rest. Thanks for your help.
Umm Yes Formica rufa are protected in the UK and it is illegal to take them from the wild... im sure someone else like miszt will post about this to :)
Many species of Formica are very rare in the uk, including rufa, rufibarbis, pratensis and candida are thought to be on the edge of extinction, although only rufibarbis has legal protection, none of them should be taken from the wild under any circumstances, there are various organizations working very hard to try to understand the problems these species are facing and reintroduce new colonies (that doesnt mean people should release there colonies into the wild, it has to be done professionaly). I would strongly urge anyone not to collect any Formica species in the wild in the UK.
There are plenty of European Formica that can be bought without a problem, but as Tail said, they are nervous and aggressive ants, rufa in particular are very quick to spray formic acid, which will damage the ants and make your house smell, well, bad lol
Kiam, possibly you should check your facts before asserting things about UK law on a public forum; as Miszt points out it isn't actually illegal to take them from the wild.
I should just explain something about the context in which I collected these queens. I live in Bournemouth on the south coast, and within this area the ant is in fact quite common. In particular, there are a large number of F rufa colonies in a public park at the edge of the beach, and in summer there are a lot of workers walking all over the paths in the park and getting squashed by members of the public who are completely oblivious to them. During the mating swarms, there are many queens walking around on the floor in the park and on the promenade; people notice the 'flying ants', children squash them, people accidentally step on them, and rival F. rufa ants decapitate them. In this context I don't have any moral qualms about collecting a handful of mated queens. I am not disturbing the nests; I am not raiding colonies for brood; I am not doing anything to the workers.
I appreciate that the ant is less common in other parts of the UK and in the rest of Europe, and if I lived in a different area I would think twice about collecting the mated queens, but collecting a few queens in a context where there are literally swarms of them getting squashed by hordes of tourists is clearly doing nothing to affect the chances of the species' survival.
The problem is nortino, that while you may have many in your area, as you said they are still very rare, and I think its hard to justify taking them just because you have allot near you, and it can also give other less conscious people the idea that it doesnt matter, obviously you have thought about it a bit before doing it, but we still have to be carefull that we dont encourage people to take Formica species from the wild in the UK, some people dont have the same sense of responsability as many of the users on this forum have ;)
This is why I urge anyone to leave Formica species alone in the UK, as they have enough of a hard time surviving as it is, and there are places around Europe that they are abundant and can be bought pretty cheaply :) would be a shame if we lost our biggest ants, we've only got 42 species as it is! :(
anyways, yep they are not easy to keep, simply because they need to be kept very calm, and they also need a pretty big nesting area, there nests are specialized, one of their most interesting features is the way they build their nest to keep it at a constant tempreture all thru the summer, using pine needles
Maybe you should ask a lawyer (esp. someone specialised in environment protection laws), if it is legal in your country or not. Anyway, this particular species is endangered because of environment devastation, not by lack of new queens, remember that only one of thousand survives. It's like picking a few seeds of some rare plant.
i'm sorry but i have to agree with miszt on this one. I have a few colonys local to me, and they are thriving atm. But i observe them and never aim to take any queens as i know its just "Wrong". An endangered species should never be taken from the wild regardless of what it is. Would you take for instance a White Tiger from the wild!!!! I think not.
Steve, ant and tiger, this is very bad comparison. Large mammals breed only a few young in their lives, and they do what they can to ensure that as many as possible will survive and grow up. This is K-selection strategy. Ants, like almost all insects, have r-selection strategy, this means they produce as many offspring (a queen can be considered an offspring of a colony) as possible, hoping a few of them will survive, and taking into account that the great majority - more than 99% - is doomed to death. And most of them die due to competition with each other or with older colonies of the same species. So there is no sense to compare ants and large mammals. Analogy to single plant seed, or single sturgeon egg, is much more sensible.