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Has there been any tamed/domesticated ants? Can you teach colonies to not bite humans? Perform commands?
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May 24, 2021 18:06
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ninjewtsu posted:Has there been any tamed/domesticated ants? Can you teach colonies to not bite humans? Perform commands? Ant-Man alt account spotted.
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May 24, 2021 18:07
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I have a lasius n colony on my balcony and while I love watching them run around everywhere they are absolutely hellbent on their aphid herding thing and it just so happens that the only stuff growing on that balcony is stuff I don't want covered in fuckin aphids. Last year I nuked the aphids and they invaded my kitchen in retaliation / desperation. e: if I wanted to ensure that they stay outside would it make sense to try putting a food source (sugar water?) outside or is that inviting disaster by bloating their numbers?
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Jun 5, 2021 23:16
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aphid_licker posted:I have a lasius n colony on my balcony and while I love watching them run around everywhere they are absolutely hellbent on their aphid herding thing and it just so happens that the only stuff growing on that balcony is stuff I don't want covered in fuckin aphids. Last year I nuked the aphids and they invaded my kitchen in retaliation / desperation. Can you post pictures/video? I wanna see your seemingly free roam colony in action!  The best bet to keep them contained to the balcony is a few steps: 1. Be vigilant in keeping your kitchen clean and remove all possible access to sugars. Keep honey in containers filled with water etc; keep jars clean and sealed; don't let food out etc. 2. Clean your windows and surfaces with vinnegar cleaning solutions and then apply ant barriers (fluon and so on) to prevent them from entering your kitchen. Ants tend to be efficient, and if your home doesn't have food for them, they won't invade in force in theory, especially if more efficient sources are elsewhere. Of course if you give them bait food to go elsewhere you may risk as you mention their numbers exploding and them exploring/probing your home anyways for food. You could try to transfer their nest to something thats better contained; like a outdoor terrarium and convert your garden similarly, with ant barriers applied to the lips so they don't get out.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:11
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Given that they already have a very functional aphid farm going, you can assume that they are doing well in terms of food anyways, so providing another source is probably an efficient way to decrease their motivation in herding even more aphids. So if your goal is to keep them around in some way, avoid an invasion of your home and decrease the number of aphid farms, feeding them regularly is a fine idea. You won't bloat their numbers, because sugar in general/honey/honeydew/aphid poop/sweet poo poo is only good to sustain them, not to let them grow. They (as in, the queen for eggs and the babies to grow) require proteins to grow and that's a way more limited bottleneck than sweet stuff. Prey insects on balconies are usually already limited, so providing an efficient source of carbohydrates shouldn't be an issue in terms of letting them grow. If you do not want them around anymore, relocating is probably the best way, however assuming their numbers are great that's not gonna be easy. Eradication would also be an option, Lasius Niger are easy to fight, although of course I wouldn't recommend that, because those poor babies need some space!! Note that, depending on your location, right now they are in a very important part of the cycle, too, leading to massive hunger and growth and they won't stay this active and hungry for long. They might be preparing for nuptial flight season right now and their activities will go down considerably once that is done.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:52
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Yeah that's basically my idea. I wanna keep them around but I'd also like to keep my plants around and not have my flatmates get mad at me  I'll try some feeding with sugar water then if you say that it's not necessarily going to lead to an expansion in their numbers sans additional protein.What's the biggest insect a Lasius n colony is gonna eat? I have absolute teeming hordes of whats probably Porcellio scaber eating my plant detritus and I've never seen the ants interact with them in any way. There's also small centipedes and regular visits from these tiny black bees, overall I'm really happy with the balcony situation. There is no clear nest and I occasionally see them carrying around brood so I wonder if they don't have a distributed / sort-of-nomadic thing going on. The colony is years old at this point, so they've sort of figured out a way to live off what's available. But there definitely was this very clear event chain last year or the year before that where they overdid it with the aphids, all the plants died, and then they expanded their search radius until they found the kitchen. I'll post some pics if I see anything cool happen ofc 
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Jun 6, 2021 21:23
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Porcellio and other destruents are usually not really a target for ants unless desperate, because they have fierce defenses and have barely proteins in them to make the fight worth it, plus the ants know that they clean up and thus usually like to have them around Many woodlice species like those even are allowed to live inside the nest as long as they don't bother them with anything bad. The size of their prey is usually only limited by their numbers and their will to try a fight. I've seen my ants attack my peaceful 12cm large roaches without any hesitation, they just went hundreds of ants at once. If already dead, they will happily dissect any big corpse, too, mice, rats, hell they'd probably eat humans if they get the chance. They can't kill mammals though, Lasius are lacking stingers and advanced towards venom sprayer devices on their butts, which cannot penetrate skin. So basically, they will happily engage with anything they can kill, any kind of insect from smaller than them to many times larger than them. Even huge 15cm desert locusts work fine, since their acid can dissolve the exoskeleton and thus make them vulnerable. You just need even more ants! So yeah, you should be fine feeding them honey, sugar water, whatever goes. It should be quite a spectacle to see all of them drinking it empty! It's very important to do it regularly though, so they will quickly learn that this is a reliable source of food and thus they will let the aphids move on eventually. Note, however, that especially Lasius are very, very connected and caring to their aphids and love them herd them en mass, it's just their thing, so it will probably take a long while until they abandon their farm project. Maybe you can speed up the process by offering dedicated aphid plants, too? Some cheap poo poo you can buy in any grocery store, basil or something. Plant it nearby (after washing it), fresh and juicy they will attract the aphids in no time and leave your other plants some room to breathe. Also, they probably regard most of the balcony as their domain, that's why they move around so much. Ants will happily spend all day rearranging the decoration of their nest and the position of the brood, they are never satisfied with how things are. My ants spread over three nests and still use the pipes at night, moving tons of brood into them and relocating them every morning when the sun goes up and it's too bright for them to stay there. It's just their thing to carry babies around all day long.
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Jun 6, 2021 21:40
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I tried giving them dedicated aphid plants but they just went absolutely insane on them and the plants died. They don't seem to have a sense for what is a sustainable number of aphids to put on a plant But yeah, they very obviously love doing that. And yeah, I was definitely reminded of your guys moving into the tubes when I see mine moving around here. The little behaviors are great. That is very cool about their relationship to Porcellio, I had really wondered about their weird peaceful coexistence. Porcellios' metabolism / gut flora / diet is probably pretty interesting.
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Jun 6, 2021 22:07
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yeah ants are usually quite wasteful and have no solid idea of when to be reluctant with resources, so they spread aphids all over the place quickly. Combined with some extra food they may be able to reduce the total number though as soon as the aphids stop working for them (when the plants start to wither), but it's just a theory, they may as well use it as incentive to spread aphids even more. It's funny to think that they provide safety and resources for the aphids and are repaid by being allowed to eat aphid rear end. It's all just efficient rear end eating
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Jun 7, 2021 09:17
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Goons Are Great posted:yeah ants are usually quite wasteful and have no solid idea of when to be reluctant with resources, so they spread aphids all over the place quickly. Combined with some extra food they may be able to reduce the total number though as soon as the aphids stop working for them (when the plants start to wither), but it's just a theory, they may as well use it as incentive to spread aphids even more. <= username is relevant Do they ever snack the occasional entire aphid? Like "ah, what's one more or less"?
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Jun 7, 2021 22:28
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Not at all, they care deeply about their aphid herds and protect them from all harm. They rub their antenna against the aphid's rear end to provoke them to poop out the honeydew and lick it up, just like you suggest, and since aphids can't actually suck on a plant, but have to rely on the juice flowing into them with a certain pressure, the ants will unplug them and move to a different part of plant or even a whole other plants once the poop stops appearing. If the aphids are in danger, they even pick them up and carry them into their nest or attack potential attackers right away to protect them. They even motivate the aphids to breed and take care of their brood from time to time. They eat rear end, it's what they do, they wouldn't eat the guy who that rear end belongs to.
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Jun 8, 2021 05:12
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They're eating a cow's rear end though. Wait are they drinking Slurm?!
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Jun 8, 2021 05:20
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But if a colony needs protein and is fine on energy, surely the aphids must start looking tasty.
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Jun 8, 2021 05:39
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The Lone Badger posted:But if a colony needs protein and is fine on energy, surely the aphids must start looking tasty. There are some ants that do have cattle; they raise insects to later eat. Only aphids are coming up with google but I've heard of ants that keep livestock underground. Dunno if they are also aphids or some kind of isopod.
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Jun 8, 2021 05:59
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Yeah I wouldn't exclude them slaughtering some of their pets if in need, but aphids have barely any nutritional value for ants, they're small and probably taste very weird as they're filled with honeydew, which means for them it's probably like eating a steak that's filled with chocolate. Usually the ants are very restrictive in separating energy food and protein food and don't mix it up, mostly because proteins are exclusively needed for larvae growth and queen egg production, while carbohydrates are needed to sustain all ants at once. Either way, before they start eating feeding the larvae to each other (that happens in times of desperation to feed those babies that appear the healthiest), they likely consider eating aphids instead.
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Jun 8, 2021 06:02
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Raenir Salazar posted:There are some ants that do have cattle; they raise insects to later eat. Only aphids are coming up with google but I've heard of ants that keep livestock underground. Dunno if they are also aphids or some kind of isopod. Absolutely, there is a whole series of animals that, in general, live with ants in peace, this is called myrmecophily. Usually this interaction is by its nature commensalistic, which is one step above parasitism (damaging the host) but also one below symbiosis (benefiting each other), as only one party benefits from the interaction, while the other is more or less not affected by it. A lot of isopods and several bugs live with ants like that, some species are specialized and depending on doing so. Those often are culled first when there's any need and sometimes the ants specifically boost their growth to have some sort of backup cattle in case they need them.
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Jun 8, 2021 06:12
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Goons Are Great posted:proteins are exclusively needed for larvae growth and queen egg production Do ants just... not perform tissue repair? Any individual ant runs until it wears out then gets replaced?
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Jun 8, 2021 10:02
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Yeah they do, but that's such a minor amount that they can process the proteins for that just by occasionally eating leftover trash, say, hatched pupae that left their cocoon behind or regular food they collect anyways, or when processing parts of their own muscles (which happens constantly, similar to how humans do it, too) and restoring it elsewhere. That said, the ability of ants to heal is in general rather limited, since their biological system is rather wasteful and ineffective in being maintained. Ants have practically no ability to store energy, like fat or whatever and repairing an exoskeleton is a tough challenge, chemically speaking. Since adult ants also, in contrast to many other insects, do not molt or grow anymore in any way, severe injuries usually stay forever if not lethal on their own. The most effective way to treat wounds is to close them up with saliva and hope it works out. It's like throwing glue on an open wound, not in theory a bad concept, but not that great either. It is no uncommon for ants to die days after they were injured, as they had no proper way to fix it up to a point where the damage turned lethal over time. A fully grown colony that no longer has a queen or brood, for example after a monogynous colony lost their sole queen and cannot replace her somehow, has practically no need to collect proteins anymore. They do it, of course, it's in their system, but they wouldn't really starve to death even when deprived of prey insects for several weeks.
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Jun 8, 2021 10:20
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why are they called ant colonies? it's not like they have a home country-colony relationship with the parent solony right?
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Jul 1, 2021 05:09
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ninjewtsu posted:why are they called ant colonies? it's not like they have a home country-colony relationship with the parent solony right? It depends!  The argentine ants colonized a lot of the world thanks to humans.
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Jul 1, 2021 05:16
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Almost all ants actually do colonize their surroundings via satellite nests that originate from the mother nest. Even my ants do that! They live in three nests, with one main one containing the brood and queen, and two smaller ones they use for some singular pupae that need special attention or larvae that tend to eat their siblings by accident and stuff like that. Sometimes in nature these satellite nests even secede from the main colony (in polygynous species with multiple queens, that is) and there even are wars for independence! Later they even enter truces and leave alongside in peace again, or wipe each other out. So there is, in fact, plenty of politics between a parent and a daughter colony. Granted, most of these extra nests happen only a rather medium distance away from the original one, usually not more than 100 meters, but for ant size that's not nothing either. Plus, the other reason is that ants appear not to form colonies as in, we colonized another continent and stuff, but they do colonize foreign soil all the time, as in, the founding of new nests and spreading their many empires. I do think that that's what the term originated from, too, but I also read somewhere at some point that the term colony is mostly meant to offer differentiation to the other hymenopteran hives as bees and wasps build them.
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Jul 1, 2021 08:11
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I'm currently experimenting with trying to introduce springtails to my ant's setups to help with cleaning and its being a struggle! I may have inadvertently contributed(?) too much substrate and now my ants seem to be digging tunnels for reasons I'm not too sure about, they don't seem to have moved any brood into the outworld but they have tunnels up against the glass and they're just hanging out there? I am thinking it's actually probably better to prepare a formicarium with substrate, moss, horticultural charcoal with springtails mixed in and then present them the new formicarium to move into as step 1; and swap their outworld after carefully transfering the workers via a pooter, but with a sand-charcoal substrate with springtails and like a flat rock for their food.
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Jul 23, 2021 00:32
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so somewhat tangential for this thread but between how interesting ants and termites are i wanted to know more about other eusocial creatures, and apparently aside from wasps and bees there's also naked mole rats and some species of shrimp. i'd really like to learn more about these non-insect eusocial animals, does anyone have any good documentary recs for them?
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Jul 23, 2021 21:16
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We lifted up a couple of slabs today whilst clearing garden space, and revealed some pretty impressive ant action. I have some questions to ask that will probably betray my ignorance, but will try and keep the description clear. At first there appeared to be two separate nests, one of 'black ants' and one of 'red ants' (sorry I can't be more specific. This is in the UK). However given that the two groups of ants were about 25cm apart, is it more likely that the black ants were slaves to the red? The former were definitely outnumbered by the latter, but neither attacked the other. We also noticed that in the efforts to evacuate larvae underground, the black ants didn't seem to play much of a part - in fact they had all disappeared underground within a minute or two, whilst the red ants were left busily evacuating for about the next 10 minutes. There were a number of winged ants around, the vast majority of which were black with a small number of red. Is there a reason why the distribution was reversed when looking at winged as opposed to non-winged? I hope this is clear, thanks again ant people for a really interesting thread.
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Aug 3, 2021 23:27
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crazyvanman posted:We lifted up a couple of slabs today whilst clearing garden space, and revealed some pretty impressive ant action. I have some questions to ask that will probably betray my ignorance, but will try and keep the description clear. At first there appeared to be two separate nests, one of 'black ants' and one of 'red ants' (sorry I can't be more specific. This is in the UK). However given that the two groups of ants were about 25cm apart, is it more likely that the black ants were slaves to the red? The former were definitely outnumbered by the latter, but neither attacked the other. We also noticed that in the efforts to evacuate larvae underground, the black ants didn't seem to play much of a part - in fact they had all disappeared underground within a minute or two, whilst the red ants were left busily evacuating for about the next 10 minutes. That's actually fascinating, and not ignorant at all! AFAIK what you describe I think I've never heard of it before. Some species of ants can merge colonies and form supercolonies and share queens/workers but all the ones I know (Myrmica Rubra, Yellow Crazy Ants, Argentine Ants, etc) are all the same species and thus can only do it to other colonies of the same species. People have managed to "merge" ants of different species together, but its insane work; involving to dunk them all in vinegar during hibernation in the hopes when they wake up they get confused, lose their sense of small and are like "idk I guess we're the same colony" and different species *can* be merged together like this. Most of the time its very difficult to get even most species of ants to accept workers of the same species (but often will seem to accept larva/eggs?); merging queens is similar to above, very difficult if they aren't a species that does it; and even then they might decide not to accept the queen. I think whats happening is that they just happen to be species that don't/aren't hostile to each other or have the good sense to stay away and not be threatening. There's a famous video of ants and termites cooperating in such a fashion. I know my previous Myrmica Rubra colony ignored the Pharoah Ants that were checking them out. If the "red" ants were smaller than the black ants maybe that's what happened. Depending on the size of the colonies and the weather and the species there's a lot of variables that determine when ant colonies start preparing for their nuptual flights; one species might have had less because either they aren't ready yet or already mostly did it and can happen at different times. Apparently Lasius Americanus are infamous for having extremely well synchronized nuptual flights and every colonies in like 100 mile radius will like for it on the same day, so you see like a million wandering about with their fat butts wobbling around like lemmings. 
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Aug 4, 2021 04:33
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I'd call that termite / ant video "cooperation" in the same sense I'd call World War One trench warfare "cooperation".
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Aug 4, 2021 06:44
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someone link the video
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Aug 4, 2021 06:49
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ninjewtsu posted:so somewhat tangential for this thread but between how interesting ants and termites are i wanted to know more about other eusocial creatures, and apparently aside from wasps and bees there's also naked mole rats and some species of shrimp. i'd really like to learn more about these non-insect eusocial animals, does anyone have any good documentary recs for them? What are those shrimp called? That sounds very cool
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Aug 4, 2021 13:34
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ninjewtsu posted:someone link the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2ek7H3llTk
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Aug 4, 2021 18:09
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aphid_licker posted:What are those shrimp called? That sounds very cool Synalpheus regalis is there more information about the colonies/what circumstances led them to this? that's really neat to see
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Aug 4, 2021 20:17
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"Evolution" is probably the short answer. Basically its been theorized at least with Army Ants that the most aggressive species wiped themselves out millions of years ago leaving more cooperative species to survive until the present day. This is because we can observed when two different army ant colonies/hordes collide instead of fighting as one would expect from a species as infamous for devouring everything in its path like army ants, instead they just miraculously slide through each other like oil and water, bypassing each other mm's apart. More aggressive species likely would have wiped themselves out if they engaged at sight, so I imagine this is a similar circumstance. Termites iirc are at a bit of an disadvantage so its in their instinct to probably not provoke the ants, and the ants know better to fight a termite colony at full strength when they're doing something more important (like migrating to new nesting grounds or preparing for nuptual flights).
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Aug 4, 2021 20:33
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Thanks for all the replies. Upon a second visit I noticed that the black ants were still quite active but the red ants had almost entirely gone underground (I would see ~30 black ants moving around at the same time as one red). They continued to stay out of each other's way, but one black ant had obviously found a lone red ant and managed to fight and kill it, before dragging it back to somewhere (the destination was obscured in the end). So a good reminder that conflict avoidance is very much a viable evolutionary strategy? Unless you see your chance, in which case go for it!
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Aug 5, 2021 09:36
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hi thread, just popping in to say that this thread is fuckin amazing and is a treasure trove of cool stuff, and i'm learning so much  huge thanks to op and everyone else! sincerely, a person with a life-long fascination with ants
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Aug 5, 2021 10:09
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ninjewtsu posted:Synalpheus regalis There's also an eusocial beetle apparently! They have fungus gardens. That is wild. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroplatypus_incompertus
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Aug 5, 2021 15:00
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It never fails to crack me up that eusocial aphids have a dedicated soldier class. Come the gently caress on, an aphid is going to beat something up? Some parasitic wasps that lay oodles of eggs in a single caterpillar actually have a few that develop into dedicated soldier larvae that die with host and only exist to attack larvae from other parent wasps. Not strictly eusocial on technicalities sadly.
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Aug 5, 2021 15:55
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 https://www.reddit.com/r/ants/comments/p0wf45/my_crematogaster_lineolata_queens_butt_fell_off/
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Aug 9, 2021 19:09
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These ants are apparently greek. As an aside, my ants are having a lot of trouble navigating the vinyl tubing, they mainly slip and slide and when trying to climb back up are like hilariously spinning their wheels without moving for what seems like several minutes before they start to make progress.
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Aug 9, 2021 20:16
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Forgive the lovely picture taken but MY LASIUS HAVE HATCHED NANITICS!? THEY HAVE SO MUCH BR00d!? My Campos were like, "idk, four eggs, that's enough right?" Feeding them was stressful but i gave each tube a cricket leg and some honey and I'm planning their setups, my plan is to connect their AC test tube nests to tubing, with a T connector so I can expand to new tubes new nests; but I think by the point they exhaust the water in their test tube setups they'll be ready for mini-hearths. Since I have five lasius colonies that seem to have all have successful foundings, I'll experiment with them. One I might give a vertical nest for tunneling; another I might give a small terrarium; etc.
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Aug 27, 2021 04:41
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so i've been reading up on harpegnathos ants, which are fascinating for a whole host of reasons, but a couple things that are unique about them are 1. they're described as solitary hunters (or at least, as solitary as ants can be i guess) and as such don't lay down pheromone trails, and 2. they can jump, and do so to help them move around while looking for food. so my guess is that 1 is related to 2, in that they probably evolved the jumping ability, and jumping around sounds like something that would either be really hard to lay down pheromone trails while doing, or it would be very hard to follow the pheromone trail of another ant that's jumping around. and without pheromone trails to direct swarm behaviors, makes sense they would've made other evolutions to support individualistic hunting behavior. so first question is how wildly off base am i here? second question is, my understanding of the ant colony "superorganism" is that the pheromone trails are basically the nervous system of the colony (with each individual ant being more like a single cell of a multicellular organism rather than true individuals). so, do these ants have pheromone signals that they utilize differently from the basic directional pheromone trails? or do they have some other mechanisms for directing group behaviors? i'm mostly thinking like, if the nest is under attack, how do all the ants get told to come out and defend the nest if not by pheromones? also, how do the individuals find their way back to the nest? my understanding is for most ants their sense of direction is built around the pheromone trails, is that true? if you took an ant from a different species and picked it up, then placed it 3 feet away from the nest but in an area with no ant pheromones in it, the ant would be completely lost right? or do they actually have some biological mechanisms that function as an internal compass? am i correct in thinking that harpegnathos would be much better at finding their way back to the nest than pheromone trail ant species?
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Aug 27, 2021 22:25
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Not a group I know anything about, but I'd be comfortable guessing that just because they lack trail pheromone wouldn't mean they lack all pheromones. I'm guessing they are still capable of putting their panic pheromone for when the nest is under attack, and can recognise colony smells and queen behavioural cues. Also, I really don't like comparing trails to neurons. It's just a trail. I do think it's valid to describe the collective behaviour of a nest as "intelligent", but it's worth bearing in mind that an individual ant is still vastly more intelligent and focused on different tasks.
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Aug 27, 2021 22:45
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