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Bad news, the queen is dead. The workers dragged her out yesterday morning. I am gutted.
I think she starved. There were may too many big workers in this colony when the garden was tiny.
Workers this size belong in much larger colonies and there was not enough fungus to support such big ants as well as the queen and so, as the queen is in the most need of feeding than any other ant in the colony, she starves.
Next time (when ever that is) I will be sure to remove any oversized workers as the fungus will have suffered too much in the post to feed them, the time it takes for the fungus to recover (although quick) is too long too support the queen who's egg laying rate will be set for much more food.
The soldier pupae (they were huge) indicate that the colony was used to being fed from a much greater amount of fungus, and as with many wild caught colonies, the change is too much.
I don't know how big the garden needs to be before ants this size should appear, but there were workers bigger than my biggest Acro workers and it was not before the garden took up over a liter before the first 1cm workers appeared.
I doubt that being chilled in the post was much help ether.
Damn.
Sorry to hear that :( , what a pity to lose such nice ants.
Better luck next time!
I guess this is a new record then.
I don't know much about Atta, but it doesn't seem likely that the queen would starve before workers. There is lot of evolutionary pressure on ants to maintain the health of the queen as a priority. Wild colonies will often have lean times, I don't think ants where the queen starved first, would still be around.
Your suggestion about removing majors does seem sensible, but I would suggest that there is some other explanation for her death. Unfortunately I don't know what that was. Perhaps as you said, the transport simply caused too much stress.
I guess this is a record time.
The workers are tiny compared to the queen, it would take very little to sustain ants that will do no growing and are as light as a feather.
The queen however is huge (and remember big insects eat a fair amount) and needs a decent food supply (workers will live off virtually nothing) and her egg laying rate would be comparable to that of a queen in a nest that can produce soldiers (hence there soldier pupae), so with next to no food the first ant to go down is likely to be the one that actually needs it. Evolutionary pressure can't help those without anything to help with, she can't exactly eat the workers.
I also think that the main blame is the stress of a cold journey; the ants can’t recover in time to replace the lost fungus.
I'm still open to suggestions :? .
I don't think she would lay eggs if she had no food coming in.
I still believe that ants like this would be able to recover from damage to the garden. It's going to happen in nature sometimes. Rarely, but it must happen.
I'm not going to take a healthy Atta colony and experiment though.
She was laying eggs and then eating them.
Nest damage must happen in the wild but I doubt they would survive if so much of the garden was destroyed, they would have to fight off predators whilst trying to rebuild and the nest would be exposed to the elements.
The workers don't think its over. They have dragged the queen back into the nest and are still busy cutting rose leaves :? .
Perhaps you should keep them? That way if you get a new queen soon, perhaps you could give that colony the fungus from the old one, which might solve the problem you had before.
I am keeping them as they are still fascinating to watch, more so than Acromyrmex, for now (probably because there is a little voice in my head saying “omg this is Atta!” :grin: ).
They are still increasing the size of the garden now. I just had a good look at the garden and it is absolutely thriving :shock: , and there maybe brood left to hatch.
I have e-mailed the guy who sold them to me to ask for a replacement as I don’t think it was in my power to prevent this; the rest of the colony loves the setup and, like I said, the fungus garden is doing great! Seems odd that only the queen should die when everything else is doing so well :? .
If I do get a replacement then I will try merging the colonies (very gradually as the dead queen is still influencing them).