Screen Shot Saturday - Express Yourself

[MikeSlugDisco]

Each week we post a high resolution screenshot to social media. To allow discussion of these we will now also be posting these to the forum.

"Like the wallpaper on your phone, the colour of your formicarium ants says a lot about you. What's your choice?"

 

[Serafine]

I think the unicolor painting is a bit extreme.

Colored heads or colored body parts (like black head, red thorax, black abdomen or orange-brown head, orange-brown body, green abdomen or red head, black thorax, black abdomen) are very common amongst ants.

It would be cool if ants could be colored different in these three parts (even fictional colors like purple head, black thorax, yellow abdomen could look cool). It would look especially impressive with ants that have larger heads.


Also the ants in my formicarium actually look slightly different from each other ;D

Some of them have very redish-brown middle segments while others are almost completely black.

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

It's one of the features that departs from reality, but it's often requested. You'll be able to choose from several natural shades to your preference!

Also, you have some very pretty ants. Amazing that you can tell individuals apart.

 

[Serafine]

It's one of the features that departs from reality, but it's often requested. You'll be able to choose from several natural shades to your preference!

Does that mean you can choose a primary and a secondary (shader) color, like in Homeworld? Or do you get a preset pattern like 'head color of your choice (i.e. purple), thorax with colored elements (here purple), abdomen with colored elements (here purple)?

Also note that there's a broad variety of ant abdomen patterns in nature, like colored stripes, colored hair (Camponotus chilensis has bright yellow hair on their abdomens, it looks hilarious) and even ladybug-like points.

Also, you have some very pretty ants. Amazing that you can tell individuals apart.

Well, I can tell apart some of them due to size (the medium worker is quite a monstrosity compared to the others), thorax color (some are very red while others are completely black) and behavior (some of them are really aggressive, others very shy).

It's gonna be difficult though when there will be several hundreds (and these ants can grow into the tenthousands!).

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

Does that mean you can choose a primary and a secondary (shader) color, like in Homeworld? Or do you get a preset pattern like 'head color of your choice (i.e. purple), thorax with colored elements (here purple), abdomen with colored elements (here purple)?

It's just a one color choice here.

 

[AntsAreAwesome]

It's one of the features that departs from reality, but it's often requested. You'll be able to choose from several natural shades to your preference!

Does that mean you can choose a primary and a secondary (shader) color, like in Homeworld? Or do you get a preset pattern like 'head color of your choice (i.e. purple), thorax with colored elements (here purple), abdomen with colored elements (here purple)?

Also note that there's a broad variety of ant abdomen patterns in nature, like colored stripes, colored hair (Camponotus chilensis has bright yellow hair on their abdomens, it looks hilarious) and even ladybug-like points.

Also, you have some very pretty ants. Amazing that you can tell individuals apart.

Well, I can tell apart some of them due to size (the medium worker is quite a monstrosity compared to the others), thorax color (some are very red while others are completely black) and behavior (some of them are really aggressive, others very shy).

It's gonna be difficult though when there will be several hundreds (and these ants can grow into the tenthousands!).

I never keep track of my ants and telling them apart. You can't tell for very long because some grow older. Usually the younger ones don't get involved in dangerous situations because they still have a whole life of work to do, while the older ones are expendable because they have already lived quite a while. What colonies have you housed or are housing? I currently have a Solenopsis invicta with a few hundred workers and lots of brood. I also have many Brachymyrmex patagonicus queens, a pheidole queen, and a few colobopsis queens. I have kept around 30 solenopsis invicta colonies (which are fire ants for those of you who do not know) and around 5 Brachymyrmex colonies. As you can tell I really love fire ants, I although I still want my pheidole queen to make a strong colony. So the question before, what ants/colonies do you have?

 

[Serafine]

I have Camponotus barbaricus and successfully raised Solenopsis fugax (but didn't keep them because good luck trying to contain 1mm ants that are specifically evolved to squeeze through everything). I've been interested in ants since forever though and even took some university courses about them.

With Camponotus it is relatively easy to tell apart individuals in a young colony because they're really big ants so you can actually see their color patterns quite well. Also the size differences between the nanitics, the minors and the media workers are quite recognizable.

And to get back to the topic how about white ants? The queen of course has to be completely black.

 

[Heyne]

That's strange, they visit the bingo site look a little different.

 

[Serafine]

What do you mean, "a little different"?
Camponotus are polymorphic, their workers come in different shapes, sizes and even colors
Here's a more recent image where they decided to dump the brood into the outworld. You can see all sorts of workers from the tiny nanitics to the large majors (no supermajors yet though). They all have a black head and abdomen but the middle segment varies from very dark blood red (almost black) to a fiery orange.