Mulder's Tapinoma Sessile

[mulder]

I stumbled upon a pile of brood and workers while collecting leaf litter for work.  I scooped up what I could find and poked around a bit more.  I took the bag home and dumped it into a large plastic tote with a layer of olive oil around the top.  I ended up picking out the leaves and brushing all the ants and brood off them so I didn't need to go collect more.

Once I got all the ants isolated, I could see the olive oil only slowed them.  I put the ants in a clean acrylic box with a few covered test tubes and some sugar water.  That box went into a larger tub filled with a few inches of water.  I discovered the next morning that these ladies aren't at all phased by water.  The entire colony had moved out of the box and taken up residence inside the old laptop I run for my microscopes.  They stayed there for two or three days while I worked on a way to contain them in the acrylic box.  When I finally had that figured out, I put the chamber of a THA mini hearth in the box, and proceeded to dismantle the computer.  Every piece removed was carefully inspected and ants and brood brushed into the box.  I found most of them, including the queen.  With the secure lid and the actual nest chamber, they've been much easier to contain.  




They seem to be settled in rather nicely.  The eggs are all stuck to the damp glass, and the larvae are in the corner buried under all the workers.  Their appetite for honey, pancake syrup, and sugar water is great.  They've also been taking a mealworm pupa every day.  Their permanent home is in production, and when it arrives, I can put the entire nest block in the outworld with the glass removed.  If I shine a light on them, they'll most likely go underground immediately.  I was just so amused with the whole computer invasion that I couldn't bear to let them go.

Any comments are welcome in this thread!

[Deleted]

Good find, mulder. Well done.

[mulder]

I've been pretty hands-off with all colonies for a few weeks, but these girls continue to amuse me. The box would start to smell and mold would grow, so I tried to fit a new screened lid on the box. They found a way out, but I never did see how. Thankfully, the queen likes that nest chamber, since she and the brood stayed put. After rounding up my wanderers, I went back to the old solid lid. I'm expecting my new enclosures any day, so I'll just deal with the smell and try to limit mold growth.

They've been doing something that seems odd to me. In the morning, they haul all the pupae out of the nest and stack them in a corner of the box. It's always the same corner, but it's just as brightly lit and warm as any other spot in the box. When I get home from work at the end of the day, they've brought everyone back to the nest. I've never seen ants just pile their young outside of the nest in plain sight. It seems like that wouldn't work well for wild ants at all. Despite that behaviour, the queen is still pumping out eggs and the workers are tending the brood. If I can keep the mold under control and not spread it to their new home, I think they'll continue to thrive.