ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

I can’t recall ever reading about that behaviour before (going after toenails), but most ant species are omnivores and will go after almost anything. I did a bit of searching and found a good number of pages where people had witnessed the same thing. They’re probably going after either the dead skin on the nails, the protein in the actual nail, or (likely) both.

[Edited 4/6/13 8:36am]

Go on, give your queen a treat! (My dogs also eat them - they have to fight the ants for it, usually licking up the ants too )

She has to live in a pyrex bowl. At the least I can do better than feed her my toenail clippings! I gave her a little slice of kiwi this morning. We'll see how she takes to that.

damosuzuki said:

does she have a name?

JoeTyler said:

imago

sexton

Ace

dave1992

all single

Ok, it's time for the single men to post their pics

ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

She has to live in a pyrex bowl. At the least I can do better than feed her my toenail clippings! I gave her a little slice of kiwi this morning. We'll see how she takes to that.

does she have a name?

Yes, I gave her a name - May, named after one of the office staff who is currently on maternity leave. I was hoping that ant 'May' would have a colony going by the time human May returned from her leave. Hasn't happened yet, and at this point I don't have too much hope that it will. I'm going to try to add a few more queens over the summer to improve my oddsm but I'll keep May around as well.

damosuzuki said:

How will you tell them apart? Where do you get them from - can you just buy them from a store? What needs to happen for a colony to start?

ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

Yes, I gave her a name - May, named after one of the office staff who is currently on maternity leave. I was hoping that ant 'May' would have a colony going by the time human May returned from her leave. Hasn't happened yet, and at this point I don't have too much hope that it will. I'm going to try to add a few more queens over the summer to improve my oddsm but I'll keep May around as well.

How will you tell them apart? Where do you get them from - can you just buy them from a store? What needs to happen for a colony to start?

I'm on the clock now and have to get to work - but if we can turn this into a discussion on ant reproduction it will be my favourite thread-jack of all time!

damosuzuki said:

ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

Yes, I gave her a name - May, named after one of the office staff who is currently on maternity leave. I was hoping that ant 'May' would have a colony going by the time human May returned from her leave. Hasn't happened yet, and at this point I don't have too much hope that it will. I'm going to try to add a few more queens over the summer to improve my oddsm but I'll keep May around as well.

How will you tell them apart? Where do you get them from - can you just buy them from a store? What needs to happen for a colony to start?

If I find more queens this spring or summer, I’ll keep them in separate test tubes. They generally don’t mix well, even If they are of the same species. I don't think they'd fight but they might find it stressful having unwanted company which might prevent them from getting settled and being productive.

I’m pretty sure you cannot buy queen ants in Canada - I’m positive that can’t be done in the US (ecosystem protection) - but if you keep your eyes open you can find them fairly easily if it’s the right time of the year. Queen ants will often be seen out on their mating flights usually in the spring on sunny days (better odds if it’s rained recently). Once they’ve mated in flight, they’ll go to the ground, tear their wings off and search for a place to start their nest. This is the point where you hope to find them. Finding a queen with no wings isn’t a guarantee that she’s mated, but there’s no way to tell that I’m aware of until you get her home and in an environment that’s comfortable.

I think the most interesting characteristic of ant reproduction is sex selection – most queens only mate once (most with more than one partner) and store the sperm for the balance of their life (which can run for decades). Female ants are produced in a ‘normal’ way in that the queen rations her stored sperm to fertilize an egg. Males however are produced from an unfertilized egg, so the male ant receives only one set genes from his mother. Because the male only has one set of chromosomes, every sperm cell the male ant produces is identical (as opposed to ‘conventional’ males, where each sperm cell produced is unique). Because each sperm cell is identical, when the sperm from that male is used in production of females, each sister ant is identical on her paternal side. On the maternal side, because the queen ant carries two full sets of chromosomes, two sisters are 50% identical. When you total that up, sister ants will be 75% genetically related (100% identical on paternal side, 50% identical on maternal side). Sisters are therefore more closely related to each other than they would be to their own offspring, and as a result the female ants in a colony are sterile as their interests dictate that it’s in their favour to have more sisters rather than have children of their own.

Things aren’t quite as clean as that – most queens mate with more than one male at the time they mate, so there isn’t usually a single male parent in each colony, which will dilute the relatedness on the paternal side, but at a high-level, simplified sense I believe that’s how colonies function.

Sorry for going on about this...I just think they’re very neat.

damosuzuki said:

No, not at all :cool:

I can't believe they live that long!

So you're hoping May lays some eggs, some males are born, mate with her and there's a colony right there in your Pyrex bowl!

Maybe she's like 30 years old already and past her expiry date? :boxed:

I'm watching "Aliens" now THERE'S a queen

ZombieKitten said:

No, not at all I can't believe they live that long! So you're hoping May lays some eggs, some males are born, mate with her and there's a colony right there in your Pyrex bowl! Maybe she's like 30 years old already and past her expiry date? I'm watching "Aliens" now THERE'S a queen

I think you should add damosuzuki to your list on the orgers you are personal friends with thread.

sexton said:

I didn't make a list

ZombieKitten said:

sexton said:

I think you should add damosuzuki to your list on the orgers you are personal friends with thread.

I didn't make a list

Since I don't have any personal friends on the org, I didn't open the thread. I just saw at one point you were the last person that posted and assumed you made a list.

sexton said:

ZombieKitten said:

I didn't make a list

Since I don't have any personal friends on the org, I didn't open the thread. I just saw at one point you were the last person that posted and assumed you made a list.

and you hoped you were at the top of the list

ZombieKitten said:

sexton said:

Since I don't have any personal friends on the org, I didn't open the thread. I just saw at one point you were the last person that posted and assumed you made a list.

and you hoped you were at the top of the list

hey hang on a minute!!!

ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

If I find more queens this spring or summer, I’ll keep them in separate test tubes. They generally don’t mix well, even If they are of the same species. I don't think they'd fight but they might find it stressful having unwanted company which might prevent them from getting settled and being productive.

I’m pretty sure you cannot buy queen ants in Canada - I’m positive that can’t be done in the US (ecosystem protection) - but if you keep your eyes open you can find them fairly easily if it’s the right time of the year. Queen ants will often be seen out on their mating flights usually in the spring on sunny days (better odds if it’s rained recently). Once they’ve mated in flight, they’ll go to the ground, tear their wings off and search for a place to start their nest. This is the point where you hope to find them. Finding a queen with no wings isn’t a guarantee that she’s mated, but there’s no way to tell that I’m aware of until you get her home and in an environment that’s comfortable.

I think the most interesting characteristic of ant reproduction is sex selection – most queens only mate once (most with more than one partner) and store the sperm for the balance of their life (which can run for decades). Female ants are produced in a ‘normal’ way in that the queen rations her stored sperm to fertilize an egg. Males however are produced from an unfertilized egg, so the male ant receives only one set genes from his mother. Because the male only has one set of chromosomes, every sperm cell the male ant produces is identical (as opposed to ‘conventional’ males, where each sperm cell produced is unique). Because each sperm cell is identical, when the sperm from that male is used in production of females, each sister ant is identical on her paternal side. On the maternal side, because the queen ant carries two full sets of chromosomes, two sisters are 50% identical. When you total that up, sister ants will be 75% genetically related (100% identical on paternal side, 50% identical on maternal side). Sisters are therefore more closely related to each other than they would be to their own offspring, and as a result the female ants in a colony are sterile as their interests dictate that it’s in their favour to have more sisters rather than have children of their own.

Things aren’t quite as clean as that – most queens mate with more than one male at the time they mate, so there isn’t usually a single male parent in each colony, which will dilute the relatedness on the paternal side, but at a high-level, simplified sense I believe that’s how colonies function.

Sorry for going on about this...I just think they’re very neat.

No, not at all I can't believe they live that long! So you're hoping May lays some eggs, some males are born, mate with her and there's a colony right there in your Pyrex bowl! Maybe she's like 30 years old already and past her expiry date? I'm watching "Aliens" now THERE'S a queen

If May didn't mate with any males before I caught her, then she's almost certainly not going to produce any eggs that will develop to adult ants. For most ant species, the queens will only produce females for the first year or so while the colony is being established, so if she's not carrying sperm with her already then I'm just not going to get a colony out of her. I've had her for almost a year and she hasn't produced any eggs that developed to larva to pupa to ant, so it doesn't seem too likely she ever will at this point - but it's possible (but not too likely) that she's just been holding out for spring/summer, so maybe we'll see something in the next month or two.

It's partly because of my ant fixation & the queen introduced in Aliens that made me find Prometheus such a letdown - but I've said enough about that already.

damosuzuki said:

Oh that's a long time - how long does it take to lay eggs? :confuse:

And

ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

If May didn't mate with any males before I caught her, then she's almost certainly not going to produce any eggs that will develop to adult ants. For most ant species, the queens will only produce females for the first year or so while the colony is being established, so if she's not carrying sperm with her already then I'm just not going to get a colony out of her. I've had her for almost a year and she hasn't produced any eggs that developed to larva to pupa to ant, so it doesn't seem too likely she ever will at this point - but it's possible (but not too likely) that she's just been holding out for spring/summer, so maybe we'll see something in the next month or two.

It's partly because of my ant fixation & the queen introduced in Aliens that made me find Prometheus such a letdown - but I've said enough about that already.

Oh that's a long time - how long does it take to lay eggs? And

She started laying eggs fairly shortly after I found her and put her in her habitat, but they never developed to the larval stage (the life cycle is egg->larva->pupa->ant, and that should probably happen over 4-8 weeks). When I saw that the eggs weren't developing, I put her in a different container and tried to keep things a little more comfortable for her (they like it warm, humid and dark) - I think I moved her in November or so. She was quiet for a few months, then laid another batch of eggs about two months ago, but again, they did not develop.

It may be that she simply hadn't mated and can't produce the first batch of females she needs to get the colony going, or perhaps she just hasn't been ready to start production (ordinarily she'd be hibernating this time of the year, which is why I'm have a little hope that I might see something happen now that we're in springtime here), or I just don't have the right environment for her, or perhaps she's just not up to it. At this point, I don't have any real expectation that I'll get anything out of her. Most queens just aren't successful - they have an incredibly high failure rate (more likely to be eaten, or unable to find a nest, or just unable to rear her first brood), but when they are successful, they're really successful. One always goes into this knowing that it's a long shot, but if nothing else I've enjoyed keeping her and sustaining her, and I'm interested to see how long I can keep her alive.

This is a little video that gives a high-level primer on the queen's activities when starting a colony that might lay out the basics of what happens a little better than I have.

I know I'm going on and on about this, but I do find them incredibly interesting.

Wow! ants ARE amazing