ANTSTORE World of Ants

[methuselah]

Ditto photoes. Sorry, they are not in original 8MP. I have to rescale to fit the quota allowed for upload the file.

[Dr.House]

hmm, okay. I think it's difficult to tell if the fungus is the one which is found in Spain. It's most likely, because the ants come from there and the fungus was spotted there too.

Otherwise it might be a fungus you became through feeding. The insects carried the spores and your ants weren't used to it (so Lasius niger in UK have no problems with a common fungus) That might be possible ... I don't know the fungus in UK and which of them might be dangerous for this specific Ant species.

Antstore is controlling their ants they say ... but I don't think they can exclude the possibility that this might happen. Spores you won't see so easy and there's mostly an incubation time before the fungus will start to grow. Nothing is 100% even if you give your best

Without telling which fungus that is, it is difficult to tell who's to "blame" for. As long that is the only case of a fungus infection nobody can tell with just photos.

I'm sorry for you colony, next time it will surely work fine. I'm sure!

greetings

... or maybe it isn't a fungus. it might be moist ... spanish ants aren't used to British rainy weather okay, i did't want to joke ... just a little gallows humour

[Dr.House]

I just found an example of a fungus infection on bullet ants. It's a nice video.

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[Kiam]

I think I have like some bits off fungus in my lasius niger colony but its not harming them or whatever it is lol

[JimmyVe]

Sorry to hear about your queen, better luck next time.

I'm guessing it is a type of fungus, but it difficult to say, if you want to be sure what it is, you need to put one dead ant in a tube and send it to a laboratory, if you now someone who has one and would like to take a look at it.

[methuselah]

Hello all, I have manged to find a scientist in ants to examine the dead samples. Here is the reply.

'Hi yes sorry for not getting back to you earlier. I incubated the ants and found no evidence of entomopathogenic fungi, there was some surface contamination by pin moulds but no insect pathogens that I could see, and certainly no evidence of the surface structures you observed earlier. So I think that rules out fungi. If there was an infection then it could be a protozoan/ microsporidian but these are often sub lethal and difficult to detect.'


So it is still a mystery what killed the ants.
In fact I noticed that when the ants die, the bits also dissappeared. I guess failing to boil the insect might be the culprit. Hard lesson learnt. Has anyone ever throw live insects into the colony for feeding? I wonder which type of insect would be safe to do so?

Also, do you need to boil those dead, dry flies that I bought from Antstore?

[miszt]

Local ants will have a defence against the fungus, this is an excellent example of why alien species are so dangerous, they have very little defence against local diseases, and they are likly to introduce disease that the local population has no defence against

[mzfckr]

wow.its can be a new fungus or what it is for all world...
sorry for your ants

[sithmaster676]

yeah thats why a lot of countries don't allow from ant species into there country, it could cause an epidemic
and im sorry about your ants.
Sithmaster676