Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

Bagged a load of Aucuba japonica variegata and fed it to my Attas and froze the rest. Went down faster than privet has ever gone down. Has to be put on the Atta list for sure as the ants went crazy for it .

Mine wont even look at privet anymore, they don't seem to want anything else I give them, they've been taking that and orange pith for over 6 weeks now and discarding everything else! Aucuba is a main stay!

Britishants.com wrote:Mine wont even look at privet anymore, they don't seem to want anything else I give them, they've been taking that and orange pith for over 6 weeks now and discarding everything else! Aucuba is a main stay!

Odd, never seen Atta react to a leaf type in this way, Privet has been knocked off 1st place .

Leafcutter wrote:

Britishants.com wrote:Mine wont even look at privet anymore, they don't seem to want anything else I give them, they've been taking that and orange pith for over 6 weeks now and discarding everything else! Aucuba is a main stay!

Odd, never seen Atta react to a leaf type in this way, Privet has been knocked off 1st place .

I just can't believe it lol

Embarrassingly that is a new one to me. Going to go on a hunt!

It's made a mockery of Bert hobdobblers book, mine do not rotate, I did manage them to take one leaf of Bergenia before they where going back to the Aucuba!

Britishants.com wrote:It's made a mockery of Bert hobdobblers book, mine do not rotate, I did manage them to take one leaf of Bergenia before they where going back to the Aucuba!

I think it is important to distinguish between ants in nature, accessing hundreds of potential food plants and rotating through them, and ants in captivity which are artificially forced to harvest only the limited resources we provide them with. I would think if the ants are choosing one particular food type over others around then this is probably more a reflection on the quality, at this time of year, of the other food sources rather than their abandoning of millions of years of behavioural development and deciding to stop this crop rotation 'nonsense' in favour of monospecific cutting.

I think spotted Laural will be a winner for sure but it wont take over from privet with young colonies I don't think. When I had a few Atta lodgers over Christmas the smaller colonies struggled more with it as they had fewer larger forager.
I don't know the name but its a green holly leave with a yellow splash in the middle, spiny but similar colours to the Laurel and mine have been taking that to so maybe green/ yellow colouration maybe a winner.

Sounds like Elaeagnus pungens maculata Dean! not tried them on that but did fill my pockets up when walking home the other night! Needless to say they where crispy when I threw them out today!