|
Man that parasite stuff is creepy. I had an ant colony on my balcony for years, they were nesting in the flowerboxes seemingly being sort of semi-nomadic, I'd often see them carrying brood around. They never came inside so it was just insanely cool to watch them. Only this year they seem to have hosed up their aphid herding, all the plants they chose died within days, absolutely black with aphids, and eventually one day they did come inside. Their pathfinding seems to be a bit weird, they went the long way around across the wall to the kitchen window rather than just through the balcony door, but they just covered everything inside and we had to kill them with that poison stuff. They basically disappeared within two days but I still find the occasional worker wandering around in odd places sorta going through the motions, but no more organized activity or ant highways. Really sad.
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2020 02:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:02 |
|
|
There's this colony of probably lasius niger where I park my bike and today they were going absolutely apeshit. Big commotion and a chain of winged ants hustling up the steel bike stand to take flight. It was amazing. Do they somehow coordinate when to take flight so they meet other ants in the air or is it just eh season is right, weather is good, someone else is probably also launching? Also is there sexual selection taking place in flight where they do a little dance before mating or does it just work via the number of fliers you manage to produce where if you produce a lot you are probably doing well?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2020 16:06
|
|
|
In monogynous species, what happens when the queen dies? Does that mean curtains for the colony and it basically lives on through the daughter colonies founded all over the place by the winged queens, or is there some way for them to have a succession?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2020 14:57
|
|
|
It's kinda wild from a resource standpoint that you're (as the species of ants in question) basically throwing out a perfectly good colony with all the shitload of workers and physical infrastructure and stuff. Like if the colony has managed to survive through the entire natural lifespan of the queen the location was probably pretty good.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2020 19:23
|
|
|
Check out ol wiener butt here: https://twitter.com/Myrmecos/status/1288638926849179655
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2020 02:51
|
|
|
Kind of a long shot, but does someone off the top of their head know of an ant species that is relatively easy to keep, does not have to overwinter (I do not have a temp controlled area that I can cool down in my place) and does a lot of above-ground landscaping / gardening / building? I'm envisioning having this big terrarium where they build bridges or do that neat thing where they build spires around plant stems etc.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2020 16:24
|
|
|
Those are good questions, thank you, that helps me think about the problem. I'm willing to try a larger setup, but it seems rear end-backwards to do something like that as babby's first colony. I would definitely be willing to do some temperature / moisture control. I share an apartment with a bunch of guys so it's all bedrooms and there's no unheated room is basically the problem, and the fridge is pretty full already. I'll hunt through the building for a place that's a bit protected from the elements, what you write makes me suspect that I way overestimated how hard the overwintering is. So just lasius niger? I kinda like how yellow ants look though. I'll think the issue over along the lines of the questions you asked, thank you again.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2020 18:06
|
|
|
The dog food thing is excellent info, thank you. I had been looking at seed-eating ants because the mental image of feeding insects to my guys all the time was kind of a turnoff, but getting a little wet cat food or something occasionally is fine so lasius niger seems like the one. The plastic bottle thing sounds amazing. How does moisture control work in that setup, I just assume that regular inhabited room moisture outside the heating period will be okay for them, or do I sort of chain up the bottles and put a sort of water feature in at one end and let them gravitate to where in the chain the moisture works for them? Do I poke air holes into the bottles?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2020 19:48
|
|
|
I'm in Germany too! I'm thinking about getting these guys: https://www.antstore.net/shop/de/Ameisen/Ameisen-aus-Mitteleuropa/Lasius-niger-Schwarze-Wegameise.html For nine Euros I get the queen and 11-25 workers, that seems like a pretty good deal to basically have a little colony that can do a little stuff immediately. Then I'd skip the test tube stage probably. I'll build the entire setup first ofc, and post pics before I dump some poor guys into there. I'll google those bottle-based setups, or if you have a link to one that you could post that would be awesome. Would lasius niger tend to eat pillbugs? I kinda wanna add some of those because they like moisture too and I think they're pretty cute, and they might be useful as detritivores? Obviously in a setup that is large enough that they can avoid one another a bit. On my balcony they seemed to be fine with coexisting.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2020 00:27
|
|
|
Goons Are Great posted:Ahh, Antstore would be exactly my recommendation by the way, been customer there for years, great guys and great products. I'd highly recommend getting some tools from there, ant specific tweezers for example they have there for a few bucks, as well as the soil as it's perfect for them. I bought a whole collection of stuff from them, all without any problems. Oh man I needed that reality check, I was already busy musing about how to make something that includes mosses and pillbugs and probably a herd of buffalo at the rate I was going. I'll keep it simple. I did assume that since Antstore have only the sizes one queen or 11-25 workers that basically reflected fresh queens from this year who just managed a couple eggs and larvae by now or ones from last year, really cool. I will let them chill in their tube for as long as they want, as a goon I can ofc sympathize with not wanting to move  Can you specify the bit about the humidity? You said earlier that you kept your guys at 85-95%, which seems pretty moist already. That is below what would risk mold? Looking forward to you posting those setups, I've browsed some forums and done some searches and so far I haven't managed to find something like what I was thinking of.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2020 17:40
|
|
|
Also sorry from me, I couldn't really do ant stuff this week and I didn't want to just post "acknowledged". Those are some amazing setups. I kinda really want it to look nice so it's not just this contraption in my room. I came into some free antstore ant arenas, two big ones and one small one, currently trying to figure out a solution for the actual nest, how to connect everything, how to do moisturizing, and how to keep the setup transportable so I can eventually bring everything to whatever overwintering spot I settle on. I also bought a hygrometer and a Pinzette . Hope this is not a weird question, but you've been incredibly generous with your time in answering my very basic questions, can I donate to some cause for you? Or send something from antstore to your local Kneipe or whatever privacy-preserving solution you prefer?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2020 17:05
|
|
|
Okay great! I have two big arenas from an acquaintance that I connected, seems like they can just avoid the open if they don't want to go there, and I'll figure out where to put the tube when I get it and see what it looks like - either into the arena or maybe tucked into a length of tube hooked up to one of the side - the tube I got is thick enough to put a normal test tube into. I'll let the whole thing stand for a couple weeks to see how the humidity and mold situation develops - I put a bit of wood in there because I liked how it looks, if that molds at the humidity I'm going for I'll toss it. And if everything seems to be stable two weeks from now I'll order some guys. The whole setup is attached onto a piece of wood, so I'll move them to the attic or basement and hope that it doesn't get too warm there. Dumb question: how do the ants handle overwintering outside? Antwiki seems to think that it's very important that they should overwinter at 0-5C from Oct-Mar, but last winter we didn't ever really consistently dip that low: https://www.wetter.com/wetter_aktuell/rueckblick/deutschland/freiburg-im-breisgau/DE0003016.html?sid=10803&timeframe=1y Does this mean that normal ants here already are super stressed by climate change? e: think the attic is out, when the sun shines on there it's gonna get really warm. Last winter was nuts here. Looks like your fridge solution is probably the safest bet. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Aug 12, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2020 01:52
|
|
|
Oh god okay I seriously thought the whole thing had to be 100%. I desperately need to do a lot more reading. Thank you very much! This guy has a long-term log of a lasius niger colony without overwintering, albeit at an extreme constant 24C throughout, it doesn't seem to go great for them but it definitely shows what you talked about regarding that they try to sort of overwinter despite the high temp: https://ameiseninfos.de/html/lasius_o__winterruhe.html
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2020 14:56
|
|
|
Goons Are Great posted:Very interesting! Not cool as the ants certainly suffer from it, but the scientific details are very fascinating. You see, they can tolerate stuff in general, but you still need to follow their biological setup to make them really happy.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2020 18:47
|
|
|
Can ants harden the soil they dig in? The used arenas I got were caked with a centimetre of what seemed like sorta spongy concrete, ie they had built tunnels throughout the substrate and it had somehow hardened
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2020 12:18
|
|
|
Goons Are Great posted:Sure thing, for one they usually use already hardened or wet soil and restructure it, as their mandibles are best used to cut through hard stuff. If the finished product starts to crumble or turn wet again they can lick it and harden it that way when it turns dry again, or they bring in water and splash it all over the place so it can harden the stuff that way. It's an essential part of nest maintenance to do this and make sure the constructed chambers stay hardened and stable, not just for general stability of the nest but also to provide a stable humidity and temperature inside. Well I'm extremely impressed, that stuff was not at all easy to get out.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2020 13:15
|
|
|
Man if it turned out that these guys store information in their nest layout that would basically be the craziest thing I've ever heard
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2020 01:26
|
|
|
Ant AAA is my new favorite thing.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2020 20:58
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:Sadly we're not the kind of goons which can have multiple threads form together to form a supercolony of threads!!!! Goons going for the rare all-drone colony
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2020 22:59
|
|
|
Gigantic gallery of pro-grade photos of leafcutter ants: https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Making-a-Living/The-Farming-Ants-Leafcutters/
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2020 02:35
|
|
|
I shelved the ant idea for this year and built a sorta forest terrarium instead. Got a couple neat-looking semitropical mosses that can allegedly deal @ room temp. The dealer didn't have a function to search by temp range so that was a bit annoying, most seem to require like 24C. Threw in a bunch of springtails and pillbugs etc to keep everything clean, but no big insects. Might add temp control and like a millipede later if everything goes well, those look p neat. I like that it looks nice and green and that's gonna be a major concern with the ant thing as well I think next year, I have a single room to live in so it'd be cool if the setup and looked nice in some way. I am figuring out moisture, basically if I crack the terrarium door (it's one of those upright ones) more or less it seems I can control the moisture pretty well, if I close it it goes all the way to 99%, and to ambient if I open it all the way. Allegedly the "terrarium police" (the springtails etc) is supposed to help keep mold at bay, at least that's what the shop writes on their page, so we'll see how that works out. There's nothing expensive in there so a whoopsie would not be a huge problem. There appears to be no terrarium thread in PI, is that right? I'll post a pic once I have everything planted in and am convinced that it'll stay sorta stable so the pic isn't this potential monument to my idiocy
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 11:51
|
|
|
I had been wondering about the "tropical springtail" thing, lmao. Ah well, they were three euros. I'll keep an eye out for mold, see how it goes and keep you updated!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 20:46
|
|
|
Thank you, as always! Got an email that my mosses should be in the mail now 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 21:51
|
|
|
Yeah I used a shitload of rotten wood and leaves for landscaping and tried putting in a vegetable scrap to see if they bite. How does it work, if I don't give them food they starve and eat my plants, so aren't I locked into a spiral of keeping them fed which makes them procreate which gets me deeper into the hole? Do I have to throw in some kind of predator to control things?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 23:24
|
|
|
Seeing how much can go wrong with keeping something like this stable really makes you think about the various systems in nature, how they interact and balance and how much can go wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2020 14:36
|
|
|
I'm extremely emotionally invested in the Pharaoh ant saga
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2020 22:35
|
|
|
Suddenly there's what kinda looks like a gigantic amount of eggs in the terrarium  Don't think it's fungi or pillbug-related, it's banks of roundish little white nodules / grains about a third or half of a mm in size, placed on bits of moist wood. e: might be snails?  
aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Sep 26, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2020 18:52
|
|
|
Yeah I put in a shitload of stuff from the outside. Leaves, rotten wood etc. Could be anything. I've never seen a snail so far, but I also haven't seen anything else big enough to produce that. Everything I got I got while it was really dry outside, so idk about the odds of randomly grabbing a snail. Biggest thing I saw so far was an earwicker.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
Yeah I don't have an expensive showpiece animal or plant in there to safeguard, or a state I'm working to preserve, so I'm okay with playing it a bit fast and loose. Definitely planned to wait and see. Ofc if dozens of snails hatch in there I'd have to kick them out before they eat everything, barren slimy wasteland isn't what I'm going for I had eggs on my balcony last year and those turned out to be stinkbugs, that was hilarious. Stinkbugs fuckin everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_shield_bug
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2020 22:00
|
|
|
That would be pretty wild. Guess if by tomorrow it has spread to cover everything that would be a good indicator!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2020 22:55
|
|
|
Good call with the slime mold, the lil white blobs turned brown and lifted up onto some stalks like insanely tiny mushrooms and are gone again already. I accidentally let the moisture drop to just barely above ambient bc I forgot to spray today so idk if that was their entire lifecycle or if they withered prematurely.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2020 19:24
|
|
|
JacquelineDempsey posted:This thread continues to entertain and educate! There's a spot by the river here (SW Virginia) that I like to sit at and sketch. There's one fallen tree that's comfy to sit on, and the other day when crouched down to fetch a pencil I'd dropped, I saw those same fuzzy white things attached to the underside of "my" tree! Was wondering what the heck it was, didn't seem like eggs but the clumpy nature (balls about the size a pea) didn't suggest fungus. I know next to nothing about fungi but my impression is that they can look like anything whatsoever. Seriously, there are some wildass looking fungi out there. Terrarium update, I had two actual mushrooms sprout in there and had to evict more pillbugs. No mold tho, which is nice, and it still smells properly wet-forest-y. Any time pillbugs are mentioned on gardening forums there'll be some bleeding heart do-gooder who says to leave them alone, they only eat rotting material but man lemme tell you, these guys will absolutely shred anything that looks like a plant.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2020 23:31
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:Why not let the ants eat them or is this terrarium not really for ants? Ya I'm still posting in here out of inertia but I veered from the ant project into a forest moss terrarium thingy instead
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2020 13:12
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/DanielKronauer/status/1317099062823444483
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 22:03
|
|
|
Def tell me if my using this as the generic crawly creature thread is unwelcome but this is pretty wow: https://twitter.com/just_whatever/status/1319232676684025856
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2020 16:05
|
|
|
"Keep trying different things until there's no longer fuckin trash everywhere" is p elegant as a problem-solving approach
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2020 02:02
|
|
|
Very cool time lapse of a fire ant colony rebuilding after a rainstorm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xceWWuShHlU I was struck by how dynamic the hill was, all those little landslides seemed to be a normal part of the process.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2021 17:55
|
|
|
Glutes Are Great posted:Oh hell yes, that is so amazing! Those landslides are exactly part of the process, it needs to be, so that the resulting hill will be strong enough to support everything as before. It's fascinating to see how tireless they work to rebuild their home, imagine what kind of coordination we humans would need to accomplish that. And they do neither talk nor have any bosses! Wish we could see what's going on inside, they presumably have to rebuild all kinds of tunnels every time that happens
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2021 20:33
|
|
|
I was kinda rolling my eyes at what I thought was sensationalist reporting by the NYT, so fuckin lol at learning that they're really actually exactly that bad.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2021 18:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:02 |
|
|
Carpantry  https://i.imgur.com/mAYVlch.mp4
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2021 18:47
|
|