Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Pictures and reports of colonies on show around the world
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Acromyrmexbob
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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Acromyrmexbob » Sat Mar 19, 2016 8:47 pm

Would be great to get regular updates from Marwell Zoo. How are they doing now. Looking for weekly updates as we discussed. Can you perhaps add a list of the food plants you are using in the food plants section. That would be very helpful.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Marwellzoo » Sat Mar 26, 2016 6:48 pm

The colony is continuing to increase in activity, particularly on those days with warmer weather. We are noticing a marked increase in activity after replenishing the browse plants (I'll put a list of species used up soon). The zoo was really busy on Good Friday and the response to the colony was amazing, from both adults and kids. Lots of comments about how great the ants are, and lots of questions about them too - really positive feedback.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Marwellzoo » Fri Apr 01, 2016 9:56 am

The colony is continuing to grow and increase in activity. The fungus gardens had originally been placed in 2 glass tanks for easy public viewing, but over the weeks the ants have removed all of the fungus from these, and repositioned it at the rear of the tank. This week we made the decision to remove the glass tanks. It's Easter holiday time, so the zoo is pretty busy. We are continuing to get fantastic feedback from guests, of all ages! These little critters really do inspire great interest in people.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Marwellzoo » Fri Apr 29, 2016 3:25 pm

This week I'll be focusing on temperatures in and around the colony.
Our ant colony is housed with our Tropical World, which is essentially a single skinned greenhouse. Although heated to a certain degree, ambient temperatures can drop considerably overnight, but climb very high during the day, particularly if sunny. The nest itself is housed within a glass tank, heated with a single ceramic bulb on a thermostat set to 24 degrees C. When the colony was originally installed, ambient temperatures were quite low, so we placed a heat mat underneath the nest site to provide a little extra background heating.
On a daily basis, we record the minimum (overnight temp) and maximum (daytime temp) inside the nest itself, and the air temp around the nest site.
During April, ambient temperatures around the nest site have ranged from 15.2 degrees minimum overnight to 32.3 degrees maximum during the day. Looking back at previous years, this is fairly typical for this time of year.
This is the first year we have actively monitored the temperature inside the nest itself, so I have no data to refer back to. At the start of the month, we were getting a minimum temperature overnight of 24.8 degrees and a maximum temperature during the day of 31.0 degrees. We felt this was too high for the fungus gardens, so turned off the heat mat, leaving just the ceramic to maintain ambient temperatures. Following this, temperatures inside the nest dropped slightly, to a minimum of 24.8 degrees overnight and a maximum of 28.5 degrees during the hottest part of the day.
I would be interested to hear from other collections what sort of temperatures they are maintaining inside the nests themselves, as I feel our temps may still be slightly on the high side. We are certainly noticing that the ants are building what look like substantial air vents at the back of the nest site.
Maintaining moisture levels in the substrate can also be a little problematic. We are finding that since turning off the heat mat, the substrate remains slightly damp lower down, but does dry out quite quickly on the surface, most notably close to the ceramic as to be expected. The ambient humidity inside the Tropical house as a whole is usually fairly high, but we do also dampen down the nest substrate with rain water at least once a day. Again I would be interested to hear how other collections manage to maintain moisture levels with their nest sites. Is it simply through spraying, or are other methods employed?
Over the next couple of weeks I will be working on a list of browse species that we use for our colony, and I will be monitoring how well they are received to report back.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Deansie26 » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:39 pm

Great update! Will be interesting to see if any other tropical house can provide information on there temperatures ranges. Andrew recently installed a new tropical house set up in Calderglen Country park so maybe they could provide some info.
The fact that you had such a successful colony before would make you think the higher temps are not an immediate risk??

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Acromyrmexbob
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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Acromyrmexbob » Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:59 pm

The temperature around the nest, underground, is that within the actual fungal chamber or in the soil surrounding the chamber. I take it you are using a probe. It is very likely, now that the heat mat is turned off, that the actual air temperature within the fungal chamber is lower than the soul around it because, as you say, the ants have constructed ventillation shafts which will almost certainly cause movement of air and cooling evaporation within the nest. Is ot possible to measure temp directly within the fungal chamber? Also I suspect your colony is very active, carrying food into the fungal chambers. If this is so it is most likely that the arriving vegetation will cause the humidity in the nest to rise. Again, if you can get a humidity probe down into the fungus chamber I suspect the level will be good. Without the heat mat on, if temperature and humidity are not correct I think the ants would simply go deeper where it would be wetter and cooler. So nothing to worry about most likely. Just continue the regime of adding water as you are doing.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Britishants.com » Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:51 pm

I recently had a set up on display in a large Victorian greenhouse, despite weather reports the sun came out all day (good Friday) and the temperature rocketed for about 3 hours before I could do anything! Oddly the ants did well over that 4 day bank holiday despite that massive peak and still go from strength to strength. My QE11 colony have been used for demos and trials and have been put up against it with regard to temperature changes but in all honesty have exceeded my expectations!

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Marwellzoo » Thu May 19, 2016 3:31 pm

Thanks for the comments. Yes, this tropical house has been in place for almost 2 decades with leaf cutter ants being on display for most of that time, and there has never been a problem. We simply monitor the temperatures as best we can, and make sure that the substrate of the nest is dampened down regularly. The issue with humidity probes is that unless you spend a small fortune, they can be highly inaccurate. I certainly wouldn't want to trust readings from one.
We can certainly try adjusting the temperature probe so that it falls within the fungus gardens, and see what's going on in there.

Browse collection
We are very lucky in that not only can we collect browse species from the tropical house itself (under the watchful eye of the gardeners!), but our landscape team have also planted a couple of small areas in the zoo specifically with the ants in mind. From the tropical house itself, we use hibiscus and banana leaf, both of which disappear into the fungus garden very quickly. From outside, we collect privet, rose, honeysuckle, hazel, bramble, pyracantha, hebe and fatsia. Honeysuckle seems to be a particular favourite, and rose is also taken very quickly, maybe because it's quite rare that they get it.
We replace the browse three times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays), although we will top it up between times if necessary. Where possible, we rotate the browse species offered, so we don't offer the same plants two feeds in a row. We have found that if we do offer the same plants, cutting really tails off and the ants take hardly anything. When you replace it with something different, cutting resumes at the normal rate.
The browse is placed in a large glass tank, connected to the nest area by a series of clear tubes, which loop high over the public path and then back down to childrens' height. We estimate that the distance from the browse station to the nest area is the equivalent of 12 miles for us.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by RichardP » Thu May 19, 2016 4:41 pm

That's a really interesting update. I will definitely be stopping in next time I'm down that way.

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Re: Marwell Zoo's new colony and setup pics

Post by Marwellzoo » Sat Jun 04, 2016 12:44 pm

Further to the discussion regarding temperature in the fungus gardens, I have now added an i-button data logger right inside the fungus. This will record temperatures every hour throughout the day and night. I'll probably leave it in there a few weeks before reading the data off it, but will then put it back so we can get a good record over the summer months and beyond. Hopefully, once complete this will give us a really good idea of what is happening inside the fungus gardens, not just over 24 hours, but over seasons as well.

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