Ant Keepers United

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
yG8iO1s.jpg


LGYHR2i.jpg


nE5NUl0.jpg


vWXeIEw.jpg
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
My ants have probably outgrown the amount of ants Empires of the Undergrowth can display without crashing ;D


Using the pictures from the 24th I made a COUNT.

This is the nest. I gave every recognizable ant a blue dot, then divided the nest into small sectors and counted the ants in those sectors by giving them a purple dot.

sK6IUb2.jpg



These two outworld pictures were taking quickly after another so there shouldn't be too much fluctiation. The amount of ants in the water tube is an educated guess based on experience. In the end I counted 79 ants and rounded them up to 80 (as seen in the first picture).

RDhtYS9.jpg


5BA69yu.jpg



This brings us to the final number of
i2RKk4N.jpg

visible ants.


Note that this count isn't their EXACT population - sometimes I had to make hard guesses when there were overlapping ants and obviously it does not include ants that were not visible, like ants hanging vertically on the backside of nest walls, ants in the connector between the two nests, ants in the water tube conenctor and the quite massive number of ants in the tubing from the nest to the outworld.

Those invisible ants included I would estimate them to about 750-800 ants in total.

And just as a reminder... they were 4 workers in March.
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
Um... what? :eek:

Well, I think my Campo queen is quite cute and the Lasius queen doesn't look bad either. Generally the workers look cutier than the queens though - love the Campo majors with their huge heads.
Z4ch3BN.jpg


bX0qz4k.jpg


beOjfw1.jpg
 

Redmoth27

Queen
Backer
Hey, Serafine, how do ants handle satellite colonies? I had trouble finding information on this so could you help me?
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
Satellite colonies are usually established in warmer places to increase brood development speed (mostly pupae) or near food sources. The queen usually stays in the primary nest, although brood may be carried into the satellite nests.
Some ants (like big colony Camponotus species) can be oligynous which means they have more than one queens with each having a seperate nest (they usually attack each other when they're in the same nest but it works as long as they're in different places, this is very hard to successfully pull off in captivity though).

The supercolony ant types can make new nests by splitting off a part of the colony that moves to the new site but that's not really a satellite nest anymore then.
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
Just a quick update...

They love shrimps tubes!
bdapWCh.jpg


Big blob at the entrance. Lots of majors standing guard.
B1j9Y8U.jpg


These are two really big majors.
IhSVvdW.jpg


Lots of ants in the nests - that's actually not all of them, about a quarter of the colony is now scattered across the outworlds and the various water tubes they have.
oxRJHyH.jpg


cfqpj8s.jpg


CbsDsba.jpg


Feeding time!
tLQ33R9.jpg


I did a bit of an expansion thing.
etHaYk1.jpg




And that's how the Solenopsis fugax tube looks now:
bUMidWC.jpg
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
Man. That colony is thriving.

I spent a couple of minutes trying to spot the queen but I'm having trouble distinguishing her from the majors - where is she?
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
In the picture with the two nests the queen is in the right nest in the upper left corner below that patch of pupae. You can recognize her by the big thorax segment where the wing muscles once where (the majors have much slimmer middle segments).

eURRYoU.jpg


Can't find her in the other pictures, she probably moved into the outworld access tube (she doesn't like light and that includes the red camera focus light).
Interestingly this Camponotus species doesn't seem to be one of those ants where the workers constantly hang to the queen and tend, feed or groom her all day long. Most of the time she just sits or walks around in the nest and doesn't get bothered by her children.



The Solenopsis queen on the other hand is literally covered in workers most of the time.

gZLHHEG.jpg
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
How's everyone's ants doing?


My Campos are eating tons of food.

vv5uxqp.jpg


3z9C483.jpg


zJZybyk.jpg


eGzWTQi.jpg


ijR0RGX.jpg


This is their entire setup now (only about half of the colony is actually in the primary nest).
cbJQj1C.jpg


xGAIddB.jpg



Btw, Lasius and Formica flights are happening right now in Europe.
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
Serafine said:
Btw, Lasius and Formica flights are happening right now in Europe.

Welp. Time to order some plastic test tubes from Amazon.

Great to see your colony going from strength to strength, Serafine.
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
I have a queen that I brood-boosted, but I can not identify her. She is about the size of a garden ant queen, but she is orange in color.
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
Why do you brood-boost a queen if you don't have an ID? Are the pupae from the same species?
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
Yes, in fact, the species are exactly the same color and size of what I guess the queen's workers would be like. These ants I noticed behave like black garden ants in every way.
 

Serafine

Queen
Backer
Beta Tester
Ecosystem Beta Tester
I guess your queen is either Lasius flavus or Lasius umbratus/Lasius claviger, depending on the size of the head. She could also be Prenolepis imparis or a Nylanderia species, depending on your location. Those all look very similar.
If you post pics I may be able to identify her.
 
Top