Atta cephalotes "bicolor"

Let everyone see the story of your colony(ies) over time. Pictures, developments, success and failures, what works / what doesn't, and your plans for expansion as time goes by!
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earthtiger
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Atta cephalotes "bicolor"

Post by earthtiger » Wed Nov 13, 2019 4:20 pm

Hi,

in 2017, I got a small colony of Atta cephalotes. This is a special form of Atta cephalotes, since some - unfortunately not all - workers do have a dark to black body. In the pet trade, this "morph" is known as "Atta cephalotes bicolor" or "Atta cephalotes bicolor". Both are just pet trade names and not valid scientific names => "nomen nudum".

To my knowledge, this pet trade name was created by Thies Schubert and Detlef Ollesch. In 2008, they found some Atta cephalotes with dark to black body in a small area in Costa Rica. They found this variaton only in coffee plantation.

Some say, it might be the subspecies Atta cephalotes isthmicola. But since I don't have any prove of that, I will still use the pet trade name: Atta cephalotes "bicolor".

My colony was collected in Costa Rica, even most of the photos of black bodied Atta cephalotes I have found on the internet are from Panama, and some from Colombia. => probably the main distribution of this variation is Panama.

In this thread, I will share some photos and videos of this colony - I try to do this in a chronological order, to show the development.

When I got them on the 2nd of December 2017, the funugs had about 250 ml and according to the seller, the colony had about 100 to 150 workers. ...I would even estimate 200+

The day when I got them:

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kind regards,
Martin

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