ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Kale^^]

I was on holiday in Tenerife with my family and found a Messor colony:

They are about the same size as Messor Barbarus, the queen is 0,9-1 cm long and workers are 0,4-0,8cm. Could be bigger though, i think i saw bigger ones in nature.
They live(d) in a desert-like place with sand, rocks and a some plants here and there, about 500m above sea-level. They were found living under a rock in sand by me.

However, problems have occurred. When i collected them, they had around 20 workers, brood and the queen, but today when i checked on them, half of the workers were dead, and all of the brood are gone.
I kept them in a empty water bottle for about a week and after that i placed the bottle in a tank and added a fresh test-tube in there, too. They are now living in the test-tube without access to the arena, because of the deaths.

So if someone could identify these ants (I'm pretty sure they are Messor species becuase of their looks and i saw their kind carrying seeds in nature), and also give me an idea what could be the cause of all the deaths?

EDIT: A picture of the same species in nature:

[SteveUK28]

Not sure about spec.. but did they have water... if not that could have been why they died..

[Kale^^]

Not sure about spec.. but did they have water... if not that could have been why they died..

Maybe, but they had moisture in the bottle and they already had the test-tube available when i saw the first deaths.
Anyway, should this be the reason, there will be no more deaths.

I just investigated the basin and it actually smells a bit like mold. I can't see any in there but it could be that there is something rotten in there.

Ps. 300 post :O

[Zagone]

Sounds very strange, but then again there's alot of factors unseen here. Soiling in the basin, moisture, previous use of the basin, food given, heating....

[Kale^^]

I'll try to answer: There were sand in the basin, just a couple of millimeters on the bottom, and the whole setup was very dry except for the test-tube (just like in their natural environment).
I found one cockroach in my hotelroom and smashed it for them, that's all i've fed them with so far, and I've not heated them with anything and lowest temperatures have been maybe 16,5 celsius in my room lately, but it could have been even lower while I was on the plane.

However, there is no new deaths and as I just checked on them, the queen was laying an egg, which is usually a good piece of news.

[Coy]

They may be Messor aegyptiacus or semirufus.
My Messor aegyptiacus look exactly the same.

[insanebe]

its impossible to identify them by just looking,

[Coy]

I just tried to help him to identify his Messor. And i said "may" and not "I'm totally sure".

[JimmyVe]

True, there is so much that can go wrong, hard to say. Could be the stress of them moving. The lost brodd is probably eaten, i would say, try not to stress them out to much, give them some heating and a good tube, and some food. Isects and seeds. And hope for the best.

[Kale^^]

Update:

I put the test-tube next to a radiator (temp. around 25-30 celsius) and no more dying has occurred for a couple of days. A couple of eggs have been laid and they seem to have 'normalized'. Tomorrow i will buy grass seeds and fly larvae for them, now they only have some peanuts to munch on.

@Coy: I compared your picture to my own pictures of the workers and yes, they look exactly the same. But often workers may look same but the species could be different. Can you post an image of your queen so we could see if they look the same? If they do, then we can suspect they are the same or very close.
Also i would like to know whether their environments are similar or not.
A picture of my Queen:

This is just a digital zoom of the picture in the first post. I will try to take a better pic off the queen next time i feed her.

[Coy]

Here is one pic of a Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar, its not my queen but the same species.

[Kale^^]

Oh, they look quite different. The colourdifferencies of thorax and head suggest that they are not the same species, but they could be closely related.

[insanebe]

To be honest your queen looks like Messor barbarus to me, this is why you will be at it forever :p

[Messorus]

Hello
For me it looks like semirufus.
But the colony musted be bigger. I see just media castes on your pics, no minors. I think they had something around 200 workers, not just 20... One my friend keeps them, I know how minors of this spec. looks like... And young colonies of Messor also ocure highier deep in soil. Soil on your picture looks dry. So I think that colony musted be in 50cm deep....
I have that experience, that Messor workers dies, when you catch them by your fingers if you are moving them... It´s somethink like that you destroy and break their hair sensors for vibrations and other types of pulses on ther abdomen and thorax and head and they have problem than, walking in the arena and than die... One my friend has also this experience, with M. arenarius ratus.
@Coy: Is that your photo????? One my friend from Israel have photographed the same M. aegyptiacus worker photo, I see now that it´s his photo, not yourse...

[Kale^^]

@Insanebebe:
The workers are totally different (head shape, colour and queen's colour), and this queen is much smaller than my Messor Barbarus queen (0,9-1,0mm vs. 1,4-1,6mm).

@Messorus:
BUMMER. I didn't know that picking by hand could get them killed :O I picked most of the workers with the bottle (worker was on ground and i took it +some soil with the bottle, you know, like a shovel)
Yes, i'm sure that it was a bigger colony but I didn't have any equipment to dig so deep. I'm lucky that the queen was so close to surface. There were some really big majors so it had to be a bigger colony.

ps. Coy said it was not his queen