Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

Hello, my name is Jackie and I look after our Acromyrmex colony here at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. The colony is thriving and has been in place now for about 11 years. Over that time, the colony has had their ups and downs and at one point, two years ago, I thought we were going to lose them, as their nest started to contract quite badly. Before this, they had a nuptial flight and I came in to the lab on the morning they decided to do this and spent the next 2 hours collecting them all up and putting them back in the tank! I secured the tank with muslin and tape, until this event was over.

Since that time, the colony has come back much stronger and the queen seems to lay on a regular basis, as we have males and females in the tank regularly. Just recently, I have noticed a new behaviour, in that the winged females are cutting leaves and bringing them back to the nest, also cleaning around in the dump tank. This started about 3 weeks ago (that I noticed) and it's still going on, although these females are fewer now. Has anyone else seen this in their captive colony?

I love our ants and am looking forward to the day when our new Science Building is finished, so Andrew can come along and build our new display. We'll then transfer the colony to the new display. By the way, the colony loves to process bramble leaves and apple and these seem to be their favourite. In the summer they like honeysuckle and buddleia flowers. If they don't like something (especially anything rotten, such as strawberries or raspberries), they chuck them over the side and raft across to the edge of their tank and climb out!! I advise people to please not feed the ants anything rotten.

Any questions, please ask, thanks.

Jackie, fantastic you have decided to join. We had a long conversation in the old forum about this, if you like I will transfer the comments to here. We started the thread again here in the Advanced Husbandry section. If you would like to repost your observations about the colony and this phenomenon there I am sure the members would be very interested in this.
Look forward to interacting here with you and coming back at some point to work with you. Speak soon, Andrew

Welcome Jackie! Interesting read! We had quite a debate about the Virgin princesses being put to task in varies species colonies! Do you have any pics? Did they mate?
Regards Sean

Welcome Jackie, great you have joined up, interesting topic with the young queen's helping out in the colony, is unusua behaviourl for sure. Sounds like a captive colony thing. Be interesting to see what other keepers large colonys do.

Jamie

Hello All and thank you. Yes, I do have some video footage and will post it as soon as I can. I hope that's possible here?

Jackie62 wrote:Hello All and thank you. Yes, I do have some video footage and will post it as soon as I can. I hope that's possible here?

If you load it to youtube first the copy and paste the URL code on here. (Will be available under the video)

Thank you, but the files are so large they're taking ages to upload...I'll take some more footage next week and make sure the files are smaller, then I'll upload as you describe..

Hello All, wow! It's great to see how many new members there are here! I'm posting here because I've been away for a very long time and it's almost as if I am new!

I have a few things to report on our captive colony here at Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge, some changes that have occurred. I'll do this in the right place shortly, when I can remember where to post! Perhaps Andrew or Deansie could jog my memory....and it's good to be back.

Good to hear from you Jackie, here is your journal
http://www.leafcuttingants.com/www.leaf ... f=13&t=270
Let me know if you have any YouTube videos you need embedded.
Jamie

Hi Jackie and welcome. Some very interesting observations so thanks for sharing