ANTSTORE World of Ants

[amrik singh]

Hi
It was a colony of Solenopsis fugax ( Or S. monticola) who had enough workers and well enough enclose nest to defend itself so I never thought there was any danger and I did not think that the Tetramorium will pass the repulsive barrier keeping the Solenopsis inside. The other colony had just a few workers. So maybe the Solenopsis thief ants have to make some hard fighting to survive and plunder other ants nests , narrow gallery and poison aerosol seems not to be the absolute weapon we thing . I did want to observe predator /prey relations of these Solenopsis with Lasius niger and for this I developed three L.niger colony's from a single queen that I Keep somewhere else , now I can forget it . But I don't want to try again with Solenopsis thief ants: The workers are to small for me to observe ,I left that for younger people with a sharper short distance sight (the only ants smaller that I have seen are yellow Plagiolepis in India who are even less visible having a transparent gaster).

[amrik singh]

Tetramorium gr. caespitum (and other Tetramorium sp. that I observed in India) are generalist (mainly scavengers and seeds collectors) ,keep aphids on roots and hunt only small , very slow moving preys like worms and insect larvae. They recruit to hunt bigger slow moving preys only very near ( less than 7 cm) gallery or track entrances because they seems never to try to recruit for hunting a large prey more than a few centimeters from it. The fact that foraging gallery's radiate far from the nest and are pierced regularly by entrance holes make the collective hunting possible each time a very slow prey blunder near an entrance hole .They seems never to hunt any sort of mobile prey if not very small. When a forager find a food source it first ingest a bit of the food or carve a apart of it small enough that it can transport easily and then go to back to the entrance hole where it come from . If the food source is important the foragers can recruit back to the nest several meters away.

[amrik singh]

Hi,
To identify to witch cryptic specie belong a colony of the Tetramorium caespitum specie complex is sometime difficult but generally impossible to me. I supposed that my relatively large Tetramorium colony belong to T. sp.E but it can instead belong to T.moravicum (or maybe to T.forte at it's eastern limit ). All these three species are genetically close to T. impurum but live in area with warm summer temperatures.

[amrik singh]

Update,
For one week now I completely stop warming the two colony's but the room temperature is still between 22°c and 23.5°c .
I give every day insect larvae or killed insects or a piece of ham and sun flower seeds or peanut or a piece of nut ( they like much nuts) and diluted honey (as they can drink in no more than half an hour).
Contrary to many other ant keeper's observations my Tetramorium colonies nearly never cover their food with soil . I suspect that when they do so it is because the food start to putrefy or that the food is to much and wet or sticky.
Ants who do not constitute real reserve of seeds need a steady protein supply during the growing season to permit the development of a large brood.If the brood is small in quantity the sudden supply of much insect (or meat or fish) putrefy or mold and is covered with soil or trash.
One thing I observed in Teramorium gr. caespitum is that foragers like to hide in an insects carcass long time after no more food is left in it and use it as covered place from which they can be recruited to subdue a prey nearby . The "recruitment race" a few centimeters around a living prey does usually works only if it reach a foraging gallery or such group of foragers.

[amrik singh]

Ants drowning in diluted honey is a problem that can easily be avoided by giving only as much as they can collect in 20 minutes or half an hour : An insect submerged in honey water stop simply fresh air intake , slow its metabolism to a near dead and so if they are out of water and clean by other workers within half an hour they come back to life as normal.

[amrik singh]

I observed several time an interesting group behavior of Tetramorium : When a scout explore a area that have not been frequented for long time and detect some preys even without catching any , it goes back to the nest ,some time far away, to recruit a more or less coherent group of foragers ( Scouts can recruit also without detecting any food but only in completely unexplored or forgotten area). This recruitment to long unused area when preys are detected and then proximity recruitment to attack individual preys when the density of foragers is enough seems , on a small scale ,to announce the army ant behavior.

[mtrein]

Hi Amrik

Nice reports, please keep them coming

Well done, the colony looks amazing.

[amrik singh]

I observed a number of times group attack by ants of different species to kill individual prey to large for one ant to tackle . The recruiter emit a olfactory signal and move about with excitation around the prey or directly to a group of nest mates nearby. So this short distance recruitment to capture a large prey does work only when forager or other old enough workers are nearby and that's apparently true for every ants capable of group hunting . Of the ants I observe Pheidole pallidula was the most capable at this stage, bringing fast a group of workers followed by one or two soldiers in one or two minutes relatively far for such small ants . So the main difference between sorts of ants hunting large preys is their ability to have nest mates ready to be recruited near the prey . Myrmica rubra can recruit to kill a large prey only to about 10 cm around the entrance of their nest. Tetramorium gr.caespitum have a network of foraging gallery , tracks and hiding places radiating from their nest and recruit to slow moving preys until 7 cm from these . Group and mass recruitment to hunting ground may have the effect to bring locally a high density of forager that permit group hunting , in Tetramorium it seems to happen only when recruiting to a new or long time abandoned hunting ground where preys are detected.

[amrik singh]

update,
The temperature of the room is now a bit more than 20°c at night and the activity and food intake of both colonies start slowing down .

[amrik singh]

Two samples of Tetramorium sp.e in the US belong to two close genetic lines : One widespread from Armenia to Italy ,the other detected until now only in Romania and the US.
So there is , as far as we know,a good chance that Tetramorium sp.e have been introduce in north America only once or twice from Romania after 1830 with the first direct commercial shipping relations between Romania and the US.

[amrik singh]

Update,
The temperature in the room is now between 19°c and 22°c but the evaporation of the water in the plaster takes the temperature of the nest down one or two degrees celsius lower.
The food intake of both colonies is now less then half of what it was during summer.
A few days ago about one hundred foragers from the smaller colony brake out and about twenty penetrate the "ant apartment" of the bigger colony and already one or two scouts of this colony had found the way back to the brake out passage to the small colony tank .
I quickly reacted by closing the gap in both tanks anti evasion barrier with oil and capturing the ants on the table. About twenty "Invaders" that did not escape before I closed the gap were killed . The big colony did not seems very alarmed at all and during the fight I did not observed any use of the stinger ,the ants were not very aggressive so it did take hours before all the trespassers were killed. I suspect that the majority of them would have escaped if the passage was not close with oil.

[amrik singh]

update,
I give permanently Sun flower seeds without husk and only 3 times a week honey , animal food only once a week. The activity and appetite of both colonies have much diminish so the food given attract fewer workers . The food intake is now about 10 times less than in summer. They are now more attracted to diluted honey than to any other food ( but still less than in summer).

[jartok]

i had some these they escaped and i have no idea how - so make sure its good protection . i sell orange woodlice which are high in protein when my colony grows ill be feeding them

[amrik singh]

Update,
The large Tetramorium colony was ,I suspected , to big for their nests and breakouts were to easy so I purchased a new large framed tank from Antstore with itong vertical nest but the galleries are to large for such small ants and the gallery plan look more as a horizontal nest than a vertical one so I narrowed the galleries with plaster and deepened each chamber with two levels 5 mm high and more than 1cm deep so I triple the horizontal surface usable by the ants .I did make myself a big vertical plaster nest with natural looking galleries most 5mm high and more than 2cm deep so to have a big horizontal surface ( The goal is not to observe in detail but just to keep the ants in best conditions possible wile been able to have a general survey of the colony) . The nests are covered with the new (and better ) red filter.
Then I connected the new tank to the big colony's tank after removing two small acrilik tanks use as foraging arena.
When I removed the dark cover from the two old nests ... surprise. The population of the big colony is even bigger than I expected , probably around 14000 workers , the nest overpopulation was such that the ground was not visible under the ants.
The biggest part of the colony stay in the old nest wile a large number of workers are in the new tank looking for food but mostly adapting the new nests and making galleries in the 2 to 3 mm deep dry sand-loam bottom of the tank .
I stopped to humidifies the old nests and keep it without cover so I expect that the colony is going to move before long .

[amrik singh]

The day before yesterday I came back late at night from driving one of my children friend home then had a look to the ant nests. A massive column of ants joined the formicarium of the two colonies : The big colony had invaded massively the nest of the smaller one . It was to late to do anything . There were few combats and today I still see some larvae been carried to the big colony nest. The surviving part of the smaller colony is now still defending the small ant farm . I can distinguish the biggest workers of the big colony from those of the other one so I can see the progress of the invasion.
The bigger colony have the advantage of number of workers , about four to one , and about half of its workers are bigger and
stronger , they are also more aggressive.
So I find myself with only one big Tetramorium colony (probably T.sp E or T. moravicum ).
I have the Tetramorium 's since December last year that is eleven months but the big colony had 41 workers so one season old and had full activity until late October so it is the equivalent of a total of three active seasons. We can conclude that the colony of these Tetramorium sp. take about three years to attain 14000 workers from a single founding queen.
It is difficult for me to have the colony in real hibernation but the temperature is now lower at night and the larvae grow seems to have stopped.