A. octospinnosus multiple queens from a captive swarm
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 9:04 pm
Hi everyone, first time posting but I'm not unfamiliar with some of the people here in real-life... Acromyrmexbob might recognise the username?
I've had experience with various colonies of Acromyrmex and Atta on and off for 21 years now and this is the first time I have seen this happen with an Acro colony. Just thought it might be of some interest, if it hasn't been seen before or if anyone can shed some light, or an opinion, on the matter would be great.
I currently have two colonies of A. octospinnosus and one of them was an escapee colony within my heated animal shed all through most of last year and part of the year before. The colony escaped out it's tub and had set itself up behind a fish tank between the glass and the wall. It used a cable from an aquarium heater as its anchor point and it did really well. In the summer they could be seen going out under the door and bringing back leaves... All good!
Anyway, I had to move the colony because I split the shed in half to make a subtropical section and the colony was obviously in the side that was to be at 10 - 14C through the winter. I managed to get almost all the fungus and most of the ants and put it back into an ant tank, making sure I had the queen. A few weeks later the first winged sexuals appeared. I have had this plenty times before but I remember noting that this time there were lots of both sexes present at the same time. The winged sexuals hung about for weeks and months and occasionally I would find some that had ended up drowned in the top of fish tanks or climbing walls after they flew the nest. Gradually this all stopped and other than once in a while I would see an odd winged queen with the foraging ants.
So, fast forward again a few weeks and I started to think the colony wasn't doing well. I had been working crazy hours and I will admit a tiny bit of neglect, but they were not foraging as well as usual (or as well as the other colony) and refusing leaf species they once accepted. I was worried that perhaps the queen had died or some other problem and so I had to explore into their tank. The fungus garden that used to be the size of a rugby ball was now only the size of a golf ball and way too many ants. I culled loads of workers and moved the fungus to a new set up, new soil etc. However, this time I had about half a dozen queens! Obviously I had no way to tell which was the original queen because unlike Atta the Acromyrmex queen seems to stay quite mobile so I checked I had all the queens I could see and moved them all with the garden.
I had a look at them over the last weekend and the garden has regrown to about fist-sized and I can see new eggs and larvae. I think the colony will recover as I obviously still have a viable queen. However, there are now multiple queens. I can see a section of the garden through the plastic and I can even see queens side by side and touching each other’s antennae.
I don’t know why the colony’s fungus crashed because it had the exact same set-up and care as the other colony. The obvious difference is the presence of winged sexuals. My half-arsed theory is that because the ants are kept in a shed with no external cues to the outside world, they did not leave the nest as a swarm to breed. Therefore, they stayed at home with mum and demolished the garden by taking precedence over the rest of the of the colony?
So I have some questions –
If a queen leaves a nest and doesn’t mate – can she live as long as a mated queen? My understanding is that queens use up energy supplies from their wing muscles to set up a new colony and don’t feed off the fungus, therefore they die. This might be wrong?
Assuming these queens have not mated, can they live as long as a mated queen within their birth colony?
Is there a chance that in their cramped living space, compared to the wild, that some actually mated with males from the same nest due to the lack of nuptial flight cue and therefore are viable fertile queens now laying eggs? Is that why they never left home?
I’ve dug up several nests over the years with Andrew that had multiple queens – is this species just more likely to have kids that never leave home? I might be wrong but I seem to remember splitting colonies with multiple queens and getting viable colonies?
Or do I just have a bunch of freeloader good for nothings that are an excessive pressure on the colony and putting the workers off their jobs? The colony is still fussy as hell and will take privet, orange pith and dandelion okay (not quickly) but almost everything else the other colony takes is now being ignored? Bearing in mind that this is a colony that once had workers demolish an entire binbag and a newspaper in one night, only for the bits to be chucked out the next day by disgusted gardeners!
Cheers
P.A.K.O.C.
(Colin)
I've had experience with various colonies of Acromyrmex and Atta on and off for 21 years now and this is the first time I have seen this happen with an Acro colony. Just thought it might be of some interest, if it hasn't been seen before or if anyone can shed some light, or an opinion, on the matter would be great.
I currently have two colonies of A. octospinnosus and one of them was an escapee colony within my heated animal shed all through most of last year and part of the year before. The colony escaped out it's tub and had set itself up behind a fish tank between the glass and the wall. It used a cable from an aquarium heater as its anchor point and it did really well. In the summer they could be seen going out under the door and bringing back leaves... All good!
Anyway, I had to move the colony because I split the shed in half to make a subtropical section and the colony was obviously in the side that was to be at 10 - 14C through the winter. I managed to get almost all the fungus and most of the ants and put it back into an ant tank, making sure I had the queen. A few weeks later the first winged sexuals appeared. I have had this plenty times before but I remember noting that this time there were lots of both sexes present at the same time. The winged sexuals hung about for weeks and months and occasionally I would find some that had ended up drowned in the top of fish tanks or climbing walls after they flew the nest. Gradually this all stopped and other than once in a while I would see an odd winged queen with the foraging ants.
So, fast forward again a few weeks and I started to think the colony wasn't doing well. I had been working crazy hours and I will admit a tiny bit of neglect, but they were not foraging as well as usual (or as well as the other colony) and refusing leaf species they once accepted. I was worried that perhaps the queen had died or some other problem and so I had to explore into their tank. The fungus garden that used to be the size of a rugby ball was now only the size of a golf ball and way too many ants. I culled loads of workers and moved the fungus to a new set up, new soil etc. However, this time I had about half a dozen queens! Obviously I had no way to tell which was the original queen because unlike Atta the Acromyrmex queen seems to stay quite mobile so I checked I had all the queens I could see and moved them all with the garden.
I had a look at them over the last weekend and the garden has regrown to about fist-sized and I can see new eggs and larvae. I think the colony will recover as I obviously still have a viable queen. However, there are now multiple queens. I can see a section of the garden through the plastic and I can even see queens side by side and touching each other’s antennae.
I don’t know why the colony’s fungus crashed because it had the exact same set-up and care as the other colony. The obvious difference is the presence of winged sexuals. My half-arsed theory is that because the ants are kept in a shed with no external cues to the outside world, they did not leave the nest as a swarm to breed. Therefore, they stayed at home with mum and demolished the garden by taking precedence over the rest of the of the colony?
So I have some questions –
If a queen leaves a nest and doesn’t mate – can she live as long as a mated queen? My understanding is that queens use up energy supplies from their wing muscles to set up a new colony and don’t feed off the fungus, therefore they die. This might be wrong?
Assuming these queens have not mated, can they live as long as a mated queen within their birth colony?
Is there a chance that in their cramped living space, compared to the wild, that some actually mated with males from the same nest due to the lack of nuptial flight cue and therefore are viable fertile queens now laying eggs? Is that why they never left home?
I’ve dug up several nests over the years with Andrew that had multiple queens – is this species just more likely to have kids that never leave home? I might be wrong but I seem to remember splitting colonies with multiple queens and getting viable colonies?
Or do I just have a bunch of freeloader good for nothings that are an excessive pressure on the colony and putting the workers off their jobs? The colony is still fussy as hell and will take privet, orange pith and dandelion okay (not quickly) but almost everything else the other colony takes is now being ignored? Bearing in mind that this is a colony that once had workers demolish an entire binbag and a newspaper in one night, only for the bits to be chucked out the next day by disgusted gardeners!
Cheers
P.A.K.O.C.
(Colin)