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Post by TenebrousNova on May 9, 2019 19:55:06 GMT
To the readers of this new journal, I owe a sincere apology. I have in fact had this colony of Pheidole pieli, purchased from Antsrus, for some time now since they were 10-15 workers strong, but feeling dejected over the many failed journals I had over the last year, I decided to delay starting one for this colony lest I fail and it join the pile prematurely. As the colony grew I kept thinking "I'll do it later", but now it's finally here. Rest assured I won't be making a habit of this and this is the only colony I hadn't disclosed before now. With that out of the way, Pheidole pieli is a small species from Asia. They are polygynous but the queens are very tiny- about as large as a Temnothorax queen! What they lack in size however, they make up for with their impressive egg laying capacity. This colony has two queens and came with their first group of workers and several eggs. They've surprised me with how well they've done since and I'd say their population is now at least fifty or so. With the growing brood pile that number will soon begin to grow much higher. For such small ants they have a big appetite and haven't ever rejected food. Today I moved the colony out of their original test tube, which was dry and dirty, into a large and clean boiling tube, which has enabled me to actually take nice photos of them. Enjoy. Here's the two queens on the brood pile: There's quite a lot of eggs at the moment. And here's the whole colony: As always, comments and feedback are welcome. And sorry once again!
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 10, 2019 20:41:43 GMT
The colony has settled down since yesterday's move so I've given them some more food. I'm not quite sure what that larva is doing in the sugar water, but I'm confident that the workers will shortly retrieve their wayward sibling...as soon as they've finished drinking, that is. One of the queens being fed: And the larvae getting fed.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 13, 2019 15:48:12 GMT
I decided to use this colony's brood as test subjects for my new handheld digital microscope. Ignore the weird timestamps on the images, I probably didn't set it up properly.
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