Ants Burying and Photography

[Stutheant]

Hello,

Two questions;

First I have a Camponotus Ligniperdus, she is currently living in a test tube with some brood AND 2 cocoons. OK, I have placed a bit of food in there and suddenly she started to tear the cotton wool blocking the water and burying the food (or at least covering it). Is she storing it or simply not wanting it in there.

Second, I notice some really nice images of ants. I have a Macro Lens (105mm Sigma on a Canon 5D for those in the know). What lighting has been used to take those shots?

Thank you in advance,

Stuart

[Stutheant]

Actually looking closely at the shredded cotton wool I notice a cocoon has also been buried ... hmmm

[Wood~Ant]

Any good light, either natural or artificial is fine for filming ants, both in video and photography. It is having a good close up or macro lens that gives the best results.

As for burying food or brood, ants often bury food for future use if they don't want it right away; and larvae are sometimes covered with soil or other material so facilitate the spinning of a cocoon in those ant species which do not have bare pupae. Camponotus belong to the Formicine group of ants which have pupae covered by cocoons. 

[Asiletto]

My Camponotus ligniperda do the same, I think they are scared of mealworms. The queen attacks the dead mealworm and bury it with cotton. In a slightly larger colony the workers put the mealworms in the most distant point from the nest.

They like a lot sugar water and honey, but for now they do not accept insects. I think I will try with some bhaktar (honey and cooked egg yolk) to give them some proteins.

[gas]

Jul 24, 2013 12:15:26 GMT Asiletto said:

My Camponotus ligniperda do the same, I think they are scared of mealworms. The queen attacks the dead mealworm and bury it with cotton.

I think they have this kind of behaviour because consider the mealworm as an enemy and not as food.
When the colony is without larvae (I mean a founding colony), ants don't need proteins but sugars, so it's quite useless put insects in the test tubes, they will be only scared about "preys" and we know very well how much they are stressable(?) !

Anyway as Wood was saying, they also use cotton to help larvae spinning theirselves and to conserve the food