Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

I travelled to Benalmadena, near Malaga this week to deliver three Acromyrmex colonies for display at the Selwo Marina and at Madrid Zoo. I met Cecilia and Nacho, who will be looking after the colonies and who, they have told me, will join here within the next day or so.
Pictures of the empty set up...





These were the colonies before being unpacked. Nacho spent some time after we left preparing the nest tank for them so the ants were still in their travelling box at the time I departed.



Also, these ants were brought to this zoo to replace, in part, a colony of Atta which had 'died out'. At the end of the visit Nacho asked what should be done with the ants that were left. I told him the best thing would be to euthanize them by freezing them. I had a quick look and in a plastic pipe in the tub I saw there was fungus. I tapped this out and, believe it or not, out popped a very healthy queen!! So now Selwo Marina will be the only establishment to have both Atta and Acromyrmex on public display in Spain. What a result!
This is a picture of the Atta colony we found after emptying the pipe of fungus and ants. The fungus was in good shape!



Amazing luck!

That's a great looking display... nice one.. And a save for the queen... Presumably you need to build another display!!

RichardP wrote:That's a great looking display... nice one.. And a save for the queen... Presumably you need to build another display!!

The display was there when I arrived. The two tanks were going to be one for the nest, one for the feeding. But now they will separate the islands in the top tank and put Acro in one and Atta in the other and the two colonies will use separate islands above for food. I think it should work OK.

Nice pictures. Great result finding the queen alive, bet they would have been happy.
What was the temperature over there arbutus tine of year?

Deansie26 wrote:Nice pictures. Great result finding the queen alive, bet they would have been happy.
What was the temperature over there arbutus tine of year?

It was brisk! Around 17-19C they said, felt more like 10-12C.
Went to Gibraltar, has always been on my bucket list, what an amazing place, everyone should do Gibraltar at some stage.

Having a live queen in the Atta colony was amazing. One of those moments when something happens that genuinely takes you off guard. I was in the middle of explaining how to kill off the left over workers from the colony when she popped out!

She popped out hearing you say that lol or not going kill my workers lmao