ANTSTORE World of Ants

[paulhdear]

Hmm.
I have a small colony of P. dives, and they seem fairly happy. I feed them on fresh insects, honey-water and frozen insects (locusts, crickets). There is a "feeding platform" towards the top of their tank, where I usually put food so I can watch them eat.

Today, I noticed something strange. There was a large droplet of water on their feeding platform (from condensation, or maybe from when I added water). Inside the droplet were three or four long (maybe 1-2cm) very thin (much less than 1mm) whiteish worms, happily wriggling around. They look a little bit like horsehair worms, maybe.

So, I'm wondering where they came from and whether they are ant parasites. I know that horsehair worms infect crickets (and maybe locusts), so perhaps they came from the ants' food (except that they've only had frozen insects lately, and I wouldn't expect worms in the insects to survive freezing). The only other option is that they came from the ants themselves. I can't imagine that they could have reached the feeding platform from anywhere else in the tank.

Can anyone here make any sense of this?

[derameisige]

Ants are frequently infested by mermithid worms, see here:
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Mermithid nematodes
Other common worm parasites of insects belong to the roundworm Family Mermithidae (Phylum Nematoda). These nematodes are free-living in the adult stage and parasitic in an animal host for at least part of their juvenile stage. Mermithid nematodes are long and slender, similar to horsehair worms, and usually range in length from 10 to 20 centimeters (4 to 8 inches). They are gray to black in color.
The adult mermithid is found in the soil (occasionally under stones) or mud and does not feed. Its life span varies from a few days to months, depending upon the stored supply. Eggs are deposited in the soil; after hatching, the larvae enter a host's body, either through ingestion or by penetrating the host's body wall.
After a period of time, the immature worm will leave its host to complete its development in the soil environment. Mermithid nematodes parasitize almost all groups of insects and are considered beneficial organisms.

In small ants the worms are much less than 10 cm long, and the mermithid worms I have seen in European ants were white. (They are considered beneficial organisms because they may help to control pest insects).
Don't set them free: If the worms were imported together with your ants they might infest native ants in your environment.

[paulhdear]

Thanks for the information!
No, I won't set them free. Will they have a serious impact on my colony, assuming that the ants are infected?

[JimmyVe]

Hard to say, if many ants are infected it doesn't look good. They could come from the food you give them (or maybe they had it already when you bought them). Do you kook your insects before you freeze them in ?

[paulhdear]

The insects looked fine before they were frozen (also, wouldn't freezing kill the parasitic worms too?). However, the ants have had some live insects also (moths, flies etc). The ants also look happy, but I guess it's hard to identify an unhappy ant...

[JimmyVe]

True. To be sure i always cook my insects before i give them, but you can never bee sure, i also sometimes give live food so...

As long as there are not allot of workers dying i don't think you have a problem.

[paulhdear]

Thanks - that's a relief. The colony is small but happy, as far as I can tell. I do often see ants carrying dead colleagues, but I don't know if this is abnormal or not. As far as I can tell, they just run around with the dead body for a long time. Weird. You think they'd at least walk slowly with some sombre music playing.

[JimmyVe]

Normally they just put the death workers with the garbage pile. Try to remove the death workers and see if there are fresh every day (and how many), depends on the colony size off course. If you have a hugs colony you will have dead workers every day, but with a small colony...

[paulhdear]

Well, the colony is not so large, but it is not getting any smaller, so I guess it's OK..... (I hope!).

[JimmyVe]

I hope it to. But keep an eye on them.