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Post by shaunus on Mar 28, 2007 22:13:36 GMT
Hey all I haven't posted here for a looooong time, because my only antfarming campaign didn't really take off. My interest faded, but I still looked on here occasionally. I have ordered a L niger queen from Germany now anyway. But what I started this thread for was this: I live in England near London, and during the end of the summer there are hundreds of L. niger queens out mating and finding places to settle down, as I'm sure is the case in many countries. But what confuses me is. with so many queens all looking to find somehwere, they must end up being very close to each other when they dig their tunnels and lay. So I pressume when they emerge next year, although many will have died through the winter, hundreds must still be fighting for borders if you like. Small area, little space, too many ants, too little food to maintain them. But I have never seen "ant wars". Evil as it may sound, I would love to see some ants from a nest launching an attack on a neighbouring nest but I have not seen this ever happen. So, what is the answer? I would say does it happen, but it MUST happen, and going on how many I saw in my garden alone last year, I expected my garden to be a battle ground! I know large established nests hibernate, and thus when they emerge the following year have HUGE workers (I'm talking L.nigers here), so does their greater numbers, more experienced queen and better knowledge of the area, etc, all help in aiding the smaller nests to die...? Thanks for any responses. Ciao
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Post by Wood~Ant on Mar 29, 2007 8:14:02 GMT
Hi Shaunus, What an interesting question for me to sink my teeth into so to speak, and an excellent topic to open up for discussion Well surprisingly out of the many mating flights that are held each summer, only between 3 - 7% of mated queens actually survive to found a new nesting colony. Most are eaten by birds, spiders and other ants, as the list of predators is high for nice plump juicy female alates. Even the queens that survive predation will still run the risk of dying during a long, cold winter, if their body has insufficient stores to keep them alive for at least 6 months. As prime nesting sites are not easy to come by, many queens will fight and kill their sisters for the privilege of getting the best spot. Then of course they may even be killed or driven off by existing, much larger already founded colonies. A new queens best chances for survival are, if she manages to nest well away from other ant nests. Or where an older colony may have died out, in which case she can move into the area fairly safely. Oddly enough though, I have never yet witnessed territorial battles between nests of Lasius niger in my garden, despite the fact that they send out hundreds of alates every year. Only their attacks on other species such as Myrmica rubra, which were either driven out or totally exterminated. I can only surmise that new queens of Lasius niger found nesting too close to an older, larger colony, are not allowed to survive or are driven away to find somewhere outside that particular colony's boundaries.
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Post by shaunus on Mar 29, 2007 11:56:09 GMT
Hmmm, interesting.
I mean, at the back of my garden there is a nest that had obviously hibernated since last year, and as I said some of their workers were HUGE when they emerged! But even so nobody appears to have witnessed an attack on a neighbouring nest...
I wonder if once a new queen has laid eggs, even if they're quite near a large established nest, when the workers emerge, small and young, they are simply crushed by the larger workers of their neighbours? I can only speak for what I have seen from L. nigers but probably with most species, in Britain at least, that they do not purposely make an effort to track down a bordering nest and attack. I wonder if food is not such a big problem...? I mean, on a hot day in mid-summer there's plenty of insects to go round I suppose.
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Post by sithmaster676 on Mar 30, 2007 5:45:13 GMT
I have witnessed quite large battles, but not between two Lasius niger colonies, they seem very happy to raid a Myrmica rubra nest and completely kill everything inside; but not to a Lasius niger nest Maybe they don't attack each other because the death toll would be too high, but when you see a stray forager meet with another Lasius niger worker they do fight. it is unusual Sithmaster676
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Post by Wood~Ant on Mar 30, 2007 8:14:02 GMT
What I have always found to be rather odd is, Lasius niger will not tolerate Myrmica rubra anywhere near them; and openly wage war against the latter specie to the point of eradication. However, both Jenant and I have often found Myrmica nests in which they happily live side by side in peaceful co-existance with Lasius flavus. I have even witnessed a colony of Myrmica ruginodis living under the same stone as a small nest of Formica lemani. Though it was noticed that these 2 species did fight once they met each other, the battles did not result in the destruction of either colony, as they would break off and call a truce after losing a small number of workers. It is fair to say that on the whole, Formica and Myrmica species don't mix that well, as both tend to nest far apart most of the time. While I have often found Lasius flavus nesting with M. rubra, it has never; and I repeat NEVER, been the case with L. niger. Although again I have found L. flavus and L. niger sharing the same nesting site
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Post by lukexx1 on Mar 30, 2007 17:23:37 GMT
When you say two species of ants are nesting together, is it prehaps one colony stole the others colonys brood or is it that they somehow made a arrangement?
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Post by Formicalondon on Mar 30, 2007 18:05:10 GMT
Lasius flavus generally seem to take a neutral position on things rather like the Swiss I think I have witnessed them living with almost all ant species I have ever seen.
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Post by Lunarion on May 3, 2007 9:43:09 GMT
About 700 meters into the woods near my house, there are 15 anthills (all sugar ants I think). The two biggest hills are very close, and there's a highly populated antway between them. They don't fight, but they enter each others colonies. I think it's strange that you can stand in one place and see 15 anthills by just looking around. Is this really normal?
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Post by Wood~Ant on May 3, 2007 14:19:10 GMT
Ant hills found so close together in one area are often one large super colony, which means that the ants are closely related and will share the same colony scent. This is often true with certain wood ant species, in that the nests are formed by budding, where a queen from the mother nest will take a small percentage of workers with her and form a sister nest some distance away from the parent nest. With very large colonies this can happen a lot, so that dozens of related nests are found. In times of hardship, a small colony can return to rejoin a larger one, as they have scent trails back and forth between each other
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