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Post by angelicdefender on Aug 4, 2011 12:16:15 GMT
I have, unfortunately, just found that my Tetramorium caespitum colony that flourished for a whole year, has, in essence, died. I left my Pheidole pallidula ant case open, and when I turned around to get some more food for them, I guess some of them got out, as when I went to feed my Tetramorium ants, a bunch of Pheidole majors and workers marched in. I grabbed most of them and put them back in their case, but at least 30 workers and 10 majors crawled into my Tetramorium nest. The nest was soon full of fighting ants. My Tetramorium colony had recently suffered from the heat, and so there were only about 150 old, weakened workers, as well as a few callows and the brood. The Pheidole ants quickly slaughtered most of the remaining workers, as well as the few callows. The queen escaped with 4 workers, 2 eggs, a larva, and a pupa, and were not seen until today, in a tiny chamber deep in the formicarium, lying dead with her abdomen chopped in half, surrounded by her decapitated workers, ruptured eggs, and several Pheidole ant carcasses. But I'm seeing a lot of tiny eggs inside the Tetramorium nest; do you think these are unfertilized Pheidole eggs, remaining Tetramorium eggs, or fertlized eggs from a queen of either ant species I missed? I think it may be the last one, because I did try introducing new queens into my Tetramorium nest, for I heard somewhere that some nests of Tetramorium caespitum were found to be polygynous.
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Post by michaelofvancouver on Aug 30, 2013 19:21:36 GMT
Did you get a video of the war?
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