Formikaristika CZ

18/05/2024

Linepithema sp. (pics 1, 3–8); Tapinoma melanocephalum (pics 2, 9–10)

Two more exotic species from the Yucatan greenhouse!
This Linepithema cf. angulatum (not L. humile since these have some pronotal hairs and humile don't) can be seen on my iNat posts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/208340086
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/198330155
They were abundant, traversing on plants collecting honeydew from Coccoidea scale insects.
These yellowish brown ants were just 2-3 mm long.

Tapinoma cf. melanocephalum: GHOST ANTS!
These weren't as frequent as the other two, I found them only on few plants/trees. Very fast, hard to catch. To catch them with my EntoTweezers, I placed some of my saliva onto their trail, which caused them to stop and search for another route, during that it was easier to catch them. They are just between 1 to 2 mm long!
Few years ago, B. Seifert published a paper describing a new tramp species called Tapinoma pithecorum, which is a darker version of T. melanocephalum. Apart from a discriminant made from many measurements (Seifert's favourite 😆), T. pithecorum can be distinguished by smaller scape, 3rd funicullar segment and maximum eye diameter shorter than in T. melanocephalum. Second funiculus segment is very short always shorter than wide.
More characteristics are found in:

SEIFERT, B. (2022). The previous concept of the cosmopolitan pest ant Tapinoma melanocephalum (FABRICIUS, 1793) includes two species(Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Tapinoma). Osmia, 10: 35–44. https://doi.org/10.47446/OSMIA)

16/01/2024

My Odontomachus rixosus colony!

From march when they arrived with cca 16w and 2Q they have grown to about 50w!
Maybe they would have even more if I heated them more and fed them more.
Now they are always active outside their nest, with brood constantly present and them excavating under the plaster nest.
First generation after arrival of workers were nanitics, paler colours, smaller size, slimmer heads. Now they have normal sized workers.

They will soon need expansion, I'm thinking of a new bigger plaster nest with different sizes of chambers (in order to see which size they prefer) and more soil (they will dig and probably make a nest as well xdd)

22/11/2023

Colourful Sugar-boosts from .eu !

Post yours too, with the tag !

Both Camponotus maculatus and Camponotus parius enjoy them a lot! So much so, you can see highlighted guts of their larvae, as they also get filled with the sugary sollution.

22/11/2023

Ponera cf. coarctata

There's an impostor among them? No, it's just two workers that still haven't got their colour even after 4 weeks.

Why that is? That's unknown to me, but it's possible that they just "didn't melanize" or have some sort of parasite that altered their development.
One thing I know for sure, I'm not the only one who observed this in their Ponera colony...

This colony has no mated queens, just unmated alates, dealates and workers.

Any specific ideas?

.

22/11/2023

Goniomma hispanicum

Finally! Workers!
Recieved in March and first worker in August, now with two and more on the way.

I have to wait before the last pupa ecloses, then hibernate them.
Next year I have to figure out how to keep them properly, if they need higher temperatures or idk.

I've been offering her weekly insects, drop of sugarwater/honey and crushed seeds. Seeds in particular were of most interest to the queen. I've observed the larvae eating seed bits directly, rather than the queen feeding them.

I would appreciate any tips 👍

22/10/2023

Reticulitermes sp.

My second try in keeping termites (Isoptera or Termitodea)!
Most would call these members of the family Rhinotermidae (Reticulitermes, Coptotermes, Rhinotermes,...) a 'primitive' termite. Yet there have been recent voices critisizing the old system and terminology. They proposed instead to divide them into 'Thermitid' (fam. Thermitidae, 'higher' termites) and 'non-thermitid' (all other termites, with Protist gut symbionts) termites.

Rhinotermidae do have true workers and not just pseudergates (intermediary state that can develop into other castes) like most 'non-thermitid' species do, but I found some sources saying that even they can have pseudergates.
It's very difficult to determine what instar and what caste a termite individual is.
From egg an ecloses a larva, very similar to its adult form, like any other hemimetabolous insects, like cockroaches (Blattodea), the closest relatives of termites. I'm not sure now if termites evolved from roaches or they share a common ancestor (prob. the former).
Larva then can develop into many different forms (castes?) with many instars between.
They can moult into workers and grow. From workers into pre-soilder and then soldier or into an ergatoid, a secondary reproductive.
If larva develops into a nymph, protergum and mesotergum slowly develop into wings as the nymph moults and grows.
But the developing nymph can choose to become a secondary reproductive as well, this time called a nymphoid with visible remains of what were supposed to be wings.
Secondary reproductives are also neotenics, adults with larval traits. They appear based of the colony's needs: big colonies needing more members,...

Nymphoid is best visible on pictures 3,4 and 7. It has darker pigmentation than other termites. Nymph in later instar is visible on pictures 5 and 6 and is white.
There are also two soldiers with yellow sclerotized heads and stronger mandibles.

As I reached the character cap, I'll write the test in the comments.

29/09/2023

Camponotus (Myrmosaulus) singularis

I never showed you my new singu colony, did I?
I got them on my birthday in March together with 2 other exotics. This colony had about 15w when they arrived but lost their sole major and few workers soon after (alcohol leaking in a cracked test tube with specimens + generally their tendency to die)
Now they have more than 30 workers and are growing steadily!

The setup is very simple yet effective, 80-99 % RH (relative humidity) and 19-25 °C are the best conditions. Plenty of sugars and some feeders also.

There are many isopods, Oribatida, pseudoscorpions, springtails, and predatory mites in the soil mix, ensuring the setup stays clean.
But fungus problems still arise, few spores and you have it everywhere. If it's just the trash, you can take it out.

29/09/2023

Nematode or roundworms and Nematomorpha or horsehair worms, both can parasitise on Lasius and other ants.

Pic. 1, 4-9 show what might be a member of Mermithidae, a family of nematode worms. The queens laying around are called Mermithogynes, characterized by shortened wings, enlarged gaster, and longer legs.
All three queens were found swimming in a pond and died within a day after collecting.
Two queens were already without the parasite and their gasters were eaten out. The third queen had the parasite poking out - video of it exiting the queen will be on my AntsCzech EN youtube in the future.
There's also one normal Lasius platythorax queen with fully developed wings for comparison in pictures 7-8.

Pictures 2 and 3 show a different "worm", it may be the horsehair worm, but I'm but a mere amateur in this field.

All the queens and parasites were put in ethanol for further use.

29/09/2023

Messor structor

It was basically one of my small dreams to catch a queen of this rare (in our lands) species.

It was only a short (few hours) stay but I could find and observe many different species I haven't found before and watch them in their natural habitat.

What surprised me the most about our harvester ants is their colorfulness. I thought of structor as black and nothing more, but I was blinded by ignorance.

First ever workers I found had reddish heads and slightly red thorax as well. These workers, on the other hand, had mainly their thoraxes red. They gave off vibes of the more southern species, Messor wasmanni, but structor isn't black but brown.

I stumbled upon the queen when looking for Eresus (ladybird) spiders. I knew they were flying, but I wasn't having high hopes!
The was fighting off some workers, but she seems unharmed. She laid eggs a day or two after being caught and doesn't seem to stress as much as M. barbarus queens.

I wanted to buy M. structor for a while now, to gather more experience keeping different Messor species, but catching her myself and keeping her moves it to another level 😍

17/04/2023

Nylanderia jaegerskioeldi

I haven't made a post about them yet, but there's not much to say anyway. Apart from 90 % of them dying in two weeks after arriving, from 50w to like 5w 😂
Cause? Seems like stress from shipping, all other possible causes (temperature, ventilation,...) were tested but weren't the problem.

09/04/2023

Hypoponera punctatissima

A pretty cool and very successful ponerine species that was introduced basicaly everywhere. But because their colonies don't disrupt local ecosystems, they're only considered as tramp species, not invasive.
They also live in Czechia, but only in botanical gardens or in pot plants that came from the tropics.

A widespread ponerine tramp-species, this small ant can be found nesting in settings that vary from litter, soil, and rotten wood in forests to disturbed sites such as gardens and fields. It is polygynous and polydomous. Two types of queen are present, winged and apterous. Males are also dimorphic, they may be large, apterous and dark brown, or small, apterous and yellow (AntWiki)

Bolton and Fisher (2011) - H. punctatissima is without doubt the world’s most accomplished ponerine tramp-species. Its range incorporates all tropical and subtropical zoogeographical regions, including most oceanic islands, and it also penetrates well into the temperate zones of both hemispheres where it is frequently synanthropic; for a brief synopsis of world distribution see Delabie & Blard (2002); European distribution is summarised in Seifert (2003).

It is a common introduced species in south and central Florida. First published Florida record: Smith 1933. (Deyrup, Davis & Cover, 2000.)

Bolton and Fisher (2011) - As well as the usual workers and alate queens, it also produces ergatoid queens and dimorphic large and small ergatoid males, but never the usual alate male form. Yamauchi et al. (1996) studied reproductive behavior in a japanese population.

03/04/2023

Camponotus micans

New Campo in my collection! This time species from Iberian Peninsula and northern Africa. Queens are 11-12 mm and workers 6-10 mm, the minors seem to be even a bit smaller than that. Their majors should have a nice big head.
They belong to subgenus Myrmosericus and should be a third species from this genus that I've kept.
They are black with dense silver-white pubescence and white-yellow stripes between gaster tergites.

19/03/2023

Goniomma hispanicum

New spanish 🇪🇸 species!
Recieved two weeks ago, they have recently laid their first eggs.
If I didn't know these ants were claustral and granivores(seed eaters), I would have guessed the queen is a parasite. Just look at those mandibles, sharp apical tooth resembling Strongylognathus (Tetramorium inquiline slavemaker) or Polyergus (obligatory (Servi)Formica slavemaker)

I'm not sure about the species, since there are few similar looking species in Spain. Therefore I have to wait for workers to arrive and take a good look at their eyes (seems to be a good sign for determination). Maybe it's not even Goniomma but Oxyopomyrmex that looks very similar.

14/03/2023

1-2: Messor barbarus pleometrosis
3: Prenolepis nitens 4Q
4-6: Camponotus cruentatus
7: Pheidole pallidula
8-9: Lasius flavus

Random updates
Messor barbarus 2022 queens laid their first batch of eggs and since I forgot to try to make 2Q founding colonies before they laid eggs, I had to try now.
These two queens were a bit agitated at each other but after a few minutes they were chill and started caring for their combined eggs since then.

Prenolepis nitens
These suckers are the last 4 queens out of 20 I bought in 2021 and they suck af. I have little to no hope for them and will just yeet them into cold (under 20 °C) if they decide to lay eggs in the warm they are currently in.
I had to rehouse them already after hibernation ended, since the yellow mould (Aspergillus nominus/nominae species group .eu ) appears every time in temperatures over 24 °C.

Camponotus cruentatus
After two years of struggling, I'll put them properly near a heatcable and make their colony grow before the workers die lmao. Their lifespan is not that long lol.

Pheidole pallidula
I kind of bully them. They once had over 500 workers but started escaping and dieing of low humidity and got reduced to under 100w. Now they slowly started growing again. I don't want them to overgrow or escape again like last time, because they did that multiple times last year.

Lasius flavus
Had 3Qs after staying in a bad nest, with bad watering system they died out. I'm going to let them grow again and see if they have majors or not.
Probably sell them afterwards.

19/02/2023

Odontoponera denticulata are granivores! 😯🤯

Some time ago I dumped seed coats and some other trash in their terárium for the isopods to eat, but to my huge surprise, the workers started to collect it. Also when gave the isopods a few oat flakes, sometimes workers came and tried to drag them to the nest.

At the time I had no idea what were they doing with them. The idea of them eating seeds seemed weird and there was no info about such behaviour online.

Recently, I've tried giving them a wider variety at the same time and they took only about 10% of the seeds, mainly millet. That got me thinking again and I tried searching for answers. I found some science papers, but none were giving clear answers to my question. Also, half of them were in chinese lol.

I google lense'd one of the more promising chinese articles and got somewhat of an answer.
The four species listed there (Pheidole, Monomorium, Odontoponera and Paratrechina) collected seeds that had no elaiosomes. They ate a part of the seed (endocarp) of Ficus benghalensis which didn't compromise it, but unexpectedly help it germinate, from 49 % to 93 % 😯

Although they said Odontoponera collected only 2.5 % of the seeds in the experiment (I think). They still do and it explains my observations!

More testing (what seeds they like, how many will they eat and so on) is needed.

You can find the article under this name:
Secondary seed dispersal of Ficus benjamina: New evidence for ant-nonmyrmecochorous mutualism.
ZHANG Shuang; CHEN Jin

19/02/2023

Camponotus maculatus MAJOR!

New update on my macu colony since November.
A month ago, their queen was the
T H I C K E S T since I go them. Jumping forward to two days ago, they really need a more space.

I decided to move them to the (DM me if you want the pics 😁) Mesh Nest Small. To which they moved in about an hour. It turned out to be smaller than I expected. They were tighly packed in the test tube, but now when they spread their legs, free space dissappeared.
I spotted two, slightly wider, but not longer larvae, my guess were media/majors, that turned out to be correct today when I checked upon them.

She must have eclosed only a few hours ago, as she's very shy and still mostly in pupal position. She's also considerably smaller than I would imagine for a major. So far she seemed even smaller than the newer workers. I'd say she's a media, but her head is little too big for that.
Like determinig which is which in Tanaemyrmex would be easy lol.
I only have to compare her to new majors (from big colonies about twice as big as this one with a massive head 😁)

Yeah and for those who don't know, they have 1 C. parius worker and 2 majors.

19/02/2023

Caligo memnon

Also known as Giant owl or Pale owl, belonging to the family Nymphalidae (only 4 legs). It comes from Mexico and usually has wingspan of 115-130 mm but can be up to 150 mm.
This specimen's wingspan is 145 mm, which is almost the maximum 👌

I bought two pupae, each for about 4 € (very cheap). The first, smaller pupa darkened, but then it didn't eclose, got even more dark and soft, it started to rot.
The second pupa eclosed about two weeks after that.
Adult butterfly will drink mainly rotting banana juices or other fruits and nectar. Larvae eat banana, ginger and similar plants and are considered pests.

14/02/2023

1,2 Oecophylla smaragdina
3,4 Iridomyrmex purpureus
5,6 Rhytidoponera cf. purpurea

I had the opportunity to check out many different ant genera collected by Mgr. Milan Janda Ph.D. (and others) from the AntScience team.
Specimens come mostly from Papua New Guinea where the Institute of Entomology of Academy of Science CR has a station.
Other come from Australia, Solomon Islands, Mexico and with high probability from other America's countries.

Weaver ants! Famous builders in the canopy of trees. One of the species many want to keep. Distributed from South Asia to New South Wales (AU). This particular worker has a nice green gaster and is holding a prey termite in its mandibles!

Meat ants! Also known as gravel ants. These fierce little (6-7 mm, so medium sized) Dolichoderinae are a dominant species in Australia. Their monogynous colonies develop fast and usual mature colony size is 11-64 000 ants, but there are records of 300 000 or more.

Purple-headed ants? Who knows how aussies call them, but this species belongs to the same genus as Green-headed ants. Ectatomminae-Rhytidoponera, dealate queens found new colonies and after death are replaced by gamergates (mated workers). Only in R. purpurea gamergates are unknown. (sauce: AntWiki)

I have a lot more pictures of genera I haven't seen before my visit České Budějovice to share!

11/01/2023

Dneska na mě vyskočila od Wordpressu otázka, co je mým cílem, misí?

Je to můj první webový projekt, který novodobě spojuje úsilí chovatelů...

Dneska na mě vyskočila od Wordpressu otázka, co je mým cílem, misí? Je to můj první webový projekt, který novodobě spojuje úsilí chovatelů…

22/11/2022

Messor barbarus
The Ant Bakers

My Messor colony with thousands (1-3) of workers are started producing alates for the second year, I spotted their big larvae in August, just like last year when they had ~5 queen alates.
This year I counted 17 queens and ONE male!
If this keeps up, I can expect 30+ queens and 5+ males next year.

(1-4) queens and majors' activity outside nests is really intense past two weeks. If the conditions were correct, and there were other M. barbarus colonies nearby, they would probably start flying.

(5) Difference between a very small minor and a very big major.

(6-8) XL mesh nest, Normal nest L, and Ytong Nest (from the newest to oldest)

(9) Their granary, medium sized plastic box with black paper all around and they store most of their seeds inside 👌

This colony's setup needs big revision!

15/11/2022

Camponotus maculatus+ C. parius BB

Currently at 23 workers including broodboosted C.cf.parius majors and normal worker.

I again stole brood from my C. parius colony as it was being transported from one nest to another. I shuffled their brood together in hopes of mixing their scent - this strategy usually works, when broodboosting with a different species' brood.

Sadly day after, they were munching on one or the BB pupae. Though I haven't confirmed if all of the new BB was eaten.

They have many new small larvae and quite a few bigger larvae and pupae, seems like population is going to increase rapidly soon.
Hopefully we'll get to see some medias and majors, bigger workers already started to eclose.

11/11/2022

Heterometrus spinifer

I knew I'd be able to take some hooot pics of this otherwordly creature.
Currently he/she is in a temporary setup with a simple hiding spot and substrate.
I'm planning on moving it to a better enclosure soon

07/11/2022

Aktualizace nabídky v Přebytcích...

Aktualizace nabídky v Přebytcích

06/11/2022

Phyllium philippinicum
Leaf Insect, should be a subadult female

06/11/2022

Scarabaeus sacer
THE egyptian beetle

Eupatorus gracilicornis
propably bred, otherwise Thailand