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Some more primitive ants I hear are more individualistic; even competing with other members of the same colony for food. Lasius progress of some of my founding colonies:     As I mentioned at least one of these when their numbers are bigger and aren't in the nanitics founding stage is going to go into some kind of milton style ant farm as I want to see ants dig some tunnels! :science101: Another is probably going to go in a more boxy terrarium setup. The others probably like hearths and the like.
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Aug 27, 2021 22:50
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ninjewtsu posted:so i've been reading up on harpegnathos ants, which are fascinating for a whole host of reasons, but a couple things that are unique about them are 1. they're described as solitary hunters (or at least, as solitary as ants can be i guess) and as such don't lay down pheromone trails, and 2. they can jump, and do so to help them move around while looking for food. these sounds a LOT like our Myrmecia ants - visual, solitary foragers/hunters in which the workers can reproduce. also some species of myrmecia are well known for their jumping abilities (Jumping Jack/ Jack Jumper ants for example). my understanding is that these types of ants are 'primitively' eusocial and display a lot more basal characteristics, they've retained ancestral features once common to all ants that other ants have evolved away from. given this and their solitary behaviour it's possible that investing heavily in pheremone trails is unnecessary and so never evolved in these species, i don't think this is because of the jumping but jumping has probably persisted as a behaviour because (1) they don't need to rely on those trails and (2) it's a more useful feature in a creature that relies on vision primarly. just my opinion here, i'm sure someone like Goons Are Great or another ant knower goon could tell us more!
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Aug 28, 2021 00:20
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So in terms of general navigation, ants mostly rely on pheromones, at least the more modern ones do. However, if you place a singular ant nearby a nest after wiping off any pheromones, they still would find their way back and wouldn't be completely lost either, even the most evolved ants nowadays that sacrificed a lot of their individual power to grow as a collective. Apart from a few exceptions, ants have eyes. They may not be big and usually they are not very good, mostly because the rather tiny size and the nature of oculus compositus means they have trouble watching fast stuff, which is a paradox given that most ants move very quickly on their own. So in a sense, ants are mostly blind while moving (not entirely, they are probably able to observe patterns, colors, sizes and light), but not at all blind while standing still. They can look a few meters ahead similar to how we can and are very able to optically identify other ants, nests, predators and stuff like that. In fact, due to the way their eyes work, it's actually the case that they can see even better when it's wet around them. This is because when it rains, pheromones usually get washed away and relying on nothing but those would leave them in an endless struggle of following swimming chemicals (most pheromones react with or dissolve in water). Ants also can smell insanely good and not just pheromones, but everything. They can reliably find their way back across a very small bridge towards their nest, even without any pheromone track to guide them, just by following their antenna. When considering their size, ants are vastly better at smelling than dogs are and a whole new dimension compared to humans. With a good ability to smell there also comes a good ability to taste, which also happens with their antenna and ants are able to "taste" their way back home, too. Another important sense is (most insect's) ability to correctly sense, locate and navigate based on vibrations in the ground. Ants do not have any ears to hear sound, but they are very able to detect movement in the soil and can locate things around them in a relatively big area. It's not to be compared with spiders and aranae, who in general have a whole organ in their legs centered around detecting the slightest vibration in the ground even in the spectrum of nanometers, but still very useful to move around. So ants are not at all lost without pheromones, else ants that live nearby bodies of water, in heavy rain, or even those super cool submarine ants would be lost entirely. It is, however, their most reliable source of information and one they always come back to, even if it means remaking a track 100 times due to weather or disruptions. Relying on these rather "normal" or simply primitive senses, like seeing, smelling, tasting and sensing vibrations, is what ants used to do originally, too. Most relatively solitary ants that hunt for themselves and merely live together, or even those that are biologically the same and lack a queen caste entirely as everyone can bear children (the gamergates we talked about itt already), do that and tend to not used pheromones or even distrust them from time to time based on the situation. The more primitive you go, you usually also find by far larger and better functioning eyes, that work very similar to the eyes of a fly, which are able to see details in mid air during insane speed even when around them is nothing but rain. The ability to use and rely on pheromones is a cornerstone in not just ant, but hymenoptera evolution in general and comparably new. It becomes more obvious when you look at ant relatives, like bees or bumblebees, of which by far most species are not eusocial at all but living in solitary all their lives. Ants as a family moved towards eusociality and adapted to that, but other animals of the same branch have not and thus were unable to evolve any dependency on pheromones (although they do use them a lot, too, pheromones on their own are an old invention, but the meaning of how intensively they are used changed drastically over time).
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Aug 31, 2021 07:16
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Hi thread! I've recently took out my ants from hibernation! As a reminder I had two Carpenter ant colonies (Novaebarcensis, and Pennsylvaticus); plus some Lasius colonies I acquired last summer.   My Penn's are pretty active and seemed to have woken up with no issues! *Happy necron noises* They even seem to have started to excavate the Ants Canada formicarium of the excess substrate and charcoal bits. A bunch of springtails even seemed to have survived!   My novae's unfortunately had a bit of a die off; the queen and a bunch of workers are fine though! So no problem, it's all daijoubu. There is a very concerning but amusingly neatly piled mass grave of ant worker corpses in one of the chambers. Currently I'm concerned they maybe have too much space, so I might just disconnect the mostly empty nest until their numbers recover with a smaller outworld; their old outworld had some mold going on despite the springtails being extremely numerous and presumably gorging themselves on it. I'm worried there might be SOME viable brood still in the pile above the water resevoir so I'm hesitant to disconnect and clear it out right away.  But as you can see they're foraging and are pretty active! I have high hopes their numbers will recover. My cricket pen:  I made it a sort of test run for making a terrerium for a naturalistic ant nest ; so there's a gravel layer to act as a drainage layer (otherwise excess moisture would collect at the bottom and cause soil to mold up and rot); then a layer of cocohusk to act as a filter; then a layer of activated/horticultural charcoal that had a excessively thriving culture of springtails to act as cleaners; then top soil which I've been water/making damp; then its the carots/crickets. The idea is I want a enclosure I don't have to clean, and this should be self cleaning as long as I am on top of feeding the crickets. I need to get something for them to hydrate themselves properly though; otherwise they'll eat it each other in order to drink. Either a sponge or maybe potato? Or a waterdisk, but they might drawn themselves like the morons they are. Sheesh.  My lasius colonies I was initially alarmed as the changes in temperature seemed to have resulted in the cotton barrier failing and some minor amounts of flooding; some of the colonies even used their own brood to form a dam to keep the surface tension of the water in check.  I did my best to insure the water wouldn't flood them, used q-tips to try to sponge off what I could; and most are fine with most of their workers! One colony though seems to have dismembered their own queen who I assume must've died shortly after I initially checked up on her.  However this is an OPPURTUNITY. *happy tyranid noises* For I've went and ordered a parasitic lasius compatible queen, one of the termite like ones that burrow/chew wood and make cardboard. This should be cool!  My current struggle is giving them their nectar because it seems to dry off when I just give them a drop and forms like a sticky residue, no workers have stupidly gotten caught in it yet but I dislike having to do additional cleaning. Maybe I'll experiment with giving them little outworlds so I have an easier time.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:04
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I recently found this thread in the bottom of my bookmarks and basically binge read it. Ants are hecking cool. First of, I just want more cool ant stories and facts really. Or colony status pictures. But a bit more on point, this is the beginning of my first garden season as a house owner, and my lawn has plenty of ants, which I would have thought would annoy me, but after reading this thread mostly fascinates and excites me. I'm in Denmark, and at a wild guess, my garden is full of garden variety lasius. I have a lot of fun watching them climb a tree, but I don't really understand what they're actually collecting, especially since the path seems pretty weak (15cm or so between workers at middle trunk, and they split up onto different branches). The colony seems to be directly below the tree. Are they into flowers or something? There doesn't seem to be aphids involved from what I can see. I'm also kinda into the idea of having a colony I can see the inside of, but between my wife and my curious/destructive four year old, I don't think I'm ready for a closed system in the house. I was thinking about a hybrid setup, where I have some sort of nest in an artificial environment (with glass sides), but using the actual garden as the outworld. My main issue is how I would go about it, since I would need for the nest to be in the dark for comfort. Currently I'm thinking something with a removable side with red glass, but are there good tried and true ways of doing what I want? It obviously needs to be weather proof and also somewhat resistant to being knocked over probably. I'm imagining just grabbing a local new queen when mating season comes, so the effect on the ecosystem should be minimal. I might intervene to defend my guys from older bullies though.
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Apr 24, 2022 19:55
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Sorry I have criminally neglected this thread.BonHair posted:But a bit more on point, this is the beginning of my first garden season as a house owner, and my lawn has plenty of ants, which I would have thought would annoy me, but after reading this thread mostly fascinates and excites me. I'm in Denmark, and at a wild guess, my garden is full of garden variety lasius. I have a lot of fun watching them climb a tree, but I don't really understand what they're actually collecting, especially since the path seems pretty weak (15cm or so between workers at middle trunk, and they split up onto different branches). The colony seems to be directly below the tree. Are they into flowers or something? There doesn't seem to be aphids involved from what I can see. So in the wild ants are after two three things in general: Aphid poop, any kind of flower or fruit juice and honey. Aphids are widely spread and available, however not really a thing for all year and also they require incredible amounts of caretaking (ever tried to actually breed aphids? Basically impossible! Even though they happily destroy any and all vegetation in your home before leaving), honey is *the* absolute poo poo for ants and they literally would murder for that, however, bees are usually not very keen in sharing and they are the only producers out there, so they are abusing their monopoly. This leaves most ants in regular garden/forest/meadow/whatever to take whatever sweet liquid they can find, since as I posted itt somewhere before, ants cannot eat anything solid due to how their mouths work. Usually this ends up being any kind of nectar, juice, anything that contains relatively simple sugars and for that reason, you sometimes see ants collect flowers and plants that do not look like usual ant food. It's early in the year, so my guess is, they woke up from slumber fairly recently - especially assuming that in Denmark you guys tend to not go full summer mode in April - and thus just want to feed their babies and the queen with anything they can find. Another possibility is that they use flowers and plant parts of any kind to construct stuff. I've seen ants trying to build a permanent bridge to their nest using twigs and glueing together grass. So that's also very possible. BonHair posted:I'm also kinda into the idea of having a colony I can see the inside of, but between my wife and my curious/destructive four year old, I don't think I'm ready for a closed system in the house. I was thinking about a hybrid setup, where I have some sort of nest in an artificial environment (with glass sides), but using the actual garden as the outworld. My main issue is how I would go about it, since I would need for the nest to be in the dark for comfort. Currently I'm thinking something with a removable side with red glass, but are there good tried and true ways of doing what I want? It obviously needs to be weather proof and also somewhat resistant to being knocked over probably. Either way, before they went to sleep last November, I prepared a small patch of land nearby the driveway (I do not own this place nor the driveway, don't tell anyone it's basically city property I believe that I kinda stole), cleared it off some vegetation, made a small roof against rain and then moved my ants outside with their whole nest, making the actual outer world their outer world, while maintaining their nest as an option. They chose to stay, turned the nest and their surroundings in their winter quarter and they actually woke up last month, still residing in their original nest (that I made from concrete, remember, it's highly artificial). This worked out well so far! Looking at it now, I basically raised Mommy Ant into a full blown ant queen, kept them inside to help them grow and then moved them outside to explore and conquer the world. Ecologically speaking this is not really responsible, given that I did observe them taking over regular feral ants, killing bugs nearby and you know, stuff ants do, but I figured that since this is a major European city far away from actual natural habitats, a bit of cheating is probably not too unusual. Basically you can use any kind of artificial nest that is suitable for the ants you want to "keep" and make it so that rain does not cause it to fly away or wind to drown in water. Everything else is up to the ants, they are the architects of their own success and will adjust everything if they feel the need. There are some downsides to this kind of wild keeping: You have limited control, the ants rule the place and you can just hope they like it. If they decide that you suck, your setup sucks and this garden sucks, they can pack up and move away in a matter of a single night and never return. Plenty of reasons why this can happen, but you can minimize them by making sure they are actually happy with the place. Danger from external threats like birds, other ants, predators of any kind is obviously a thing. Ants will die, probably en mass, it's what nature does, but as long as the setup itself remains suitable and there is no major other ant colony nearby that endangers them, a well-grown colony will handle it. No guarantee of course, it just takes one smart bird to find a way to crack open the nest, eat the queen and they will inevitably wither and die off, but ants have plenty of ways to defend themselves and after all, there is a reason ants as a family of animals are so successful on the entire planet. There also are some major upsides: Basically no work at all. If you leave for a while, no matter, they will find their food. If you make them too dependant on what you offer, not providing that food will automatically lead to them leaving for greener pastures, but apart from that, there is nothing you really need to do, while always having the option to offer additional nutrition, clean water and so on. Parasites and diseases are pretty much impossible to have. A regular colony inside your home has limited space and limited options, leading to the danger of mite infestations, bacteria or fungi growing, whatever - when outside, this pretty much never happens, because the ants have a full garden of possibilities to fight that off. It is exceedingly rare for any kind of disease or parasite to fully wipe out a functioning colony in the wild, while this is a very real danger for regular ant keeping. So yeah, making this happen in your garden (or anyone else's garden, see myself) is easy and very possible. When taking a queen from your local nuptial flights (happening this year probably around July!), you also minimize any impact on your local animal kingdom. Of course, it still is an artificial influence that will cause changes, but since our regular gardens/ecosystems that exist around human settlements of any kind are already heavily impacted by us being there, you will not cause a local ecological catastrophe for providing ants a place to crash.
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Apr 26, 2022 16:44
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Are the surfac dirt piles that mark ant nests just where they put the soil they dig out underground, or do their above ground structure serve any kind of purpose? I know from ripping them apart as a child that they're pretty intricate webs of tunnels and sometimes have eggs in them. Is that just like, the ants piled their dirt from excavating up top then later while digging tunnels don't distinguish between underground and the dirt they just threw up on the surface?
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May 4, 2022 01:08
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Depends on the species. Most ants are focused more underground and for them, those piles of dirt and soil are mostly just the place they dump the stuff on. Sometimes something funny happens though, when they do that and create rather large mountains of soil, they realize that what they created is also a fine place for brood or food storage due to the humidity and acidity level it may have. Then they sort of re-explore the artificial structure they created and start digging tunnels, there, too, so they can properly use it. Since eggs, larvae and pupae all have different requirements how they need to be stored, it is very common for pretty much all species to spread them across their territory as much as they see fit. Some species, especially wood ants (genus Formica is famous for that) figured that they can use their artificial architecture professionally though and they start building entire cities both underground and on the surface, made of soil, twigs, stones, whatever. Especially Formica are known to barely work underground at all at this point, as instead they build huge towers and mountains that they dig into, not unlike many termite species, that are known for their huge structures. A big Formica colony can build structures up to a meter tall and several meters in diameter, the most common sight of this are the big ant hills they construct in the forest.
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May 4, 2022 07:10
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I sadly failed in my effort to introduce a parasitic queen to my queenless lasius's I really was curious about those cardboard/carton producing ants. My local ant dealer has Campo Castaneus available for sale! 
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May 7, 2022 14:43
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I have bought the Orange Ants. Glory to the House of Orange!
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May 23, 2022 21:40
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post the ants imo
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May 25, 2022 17:36
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You ask and thou shall receive: She came with caviar looking eggs  She's made like a second clutch since but she freaks the gently caress out whenever I remove the cover to take a peak and I don't wanna stress her out because she might eat her own eggs.
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May 25, 2022 20:52
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Woah what a beauty, yeah just leave her be, I'm sure she's already in a lot of stress right now. Especially because she has to take care of her babies while being busy looking so beautiful, that's like two jobs
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May 25, 2022 21:26
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I have just found some ants acting strange in my garden and wonder if anyone has an idea what they were up to. Key facts UK location, they looked like the normal ants we have here Happened just now, so summer evening, a bit cool, and at 10:30pm so it's dark. I turn on a garden light and right under it is a small raised bed type thing about a meter or so off the floor with a large rose bush in it. On the rose bush leaves were some ants, maybe 10 or so that I could see. Most on their own leaf. They were seeming really sluggish, like they had just woken up (maybe I woke them with the light? But why were they sleeping on the leaves of a rose Bush? Seems kinda exposed). They were slowly walking around the leaf, one guy was climbing the stalk. I instantly thought, oh I must have some kind of aphid infection and the ants are feeding off it bland these guys have the night shift but after a good look I couldn't see any signs under any of the leaves. Just seemed kinda weird to me, any ideas? Is this bush camping normal behaviour?
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May 31, 2022 22:48
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Hmmm, maybe they got distracted by some sort of smell the leaf emitted, or some animal caused it to smell weird, so they wanted to check it out. Ants do not normally sleep outside of their nest, unless they are physically absolutely exhausted, and even then they only will stay still for a couple of minutes at best, as they do not have a circadian rhythm like we do, but their sleep consists out of very short, a few minute long naps spread over the entire day to preserve energy. Chances are they were hunting, sometimes ants adapt a stalking technique to hunt prey, similar to spiders, so they sit there and wait for something to show up before attacking. Depending on how cool it was, though, it's likely that they got a bit too cold on the leaf (maybe they got in touch with water before?) and it drained them of their heat. Since ants, like all insects, cannot regulate their own body temperature without external help, they will be forced to slow down if it gets too cold. At a certain temperature, they are unable to move entirely until the heat goes back up again, which is also causing their hibernation periods.
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Jun 2, 2022 09:56
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Yeah it was maybe 8-10c so cool but totally fine to just be outside in a warm top. That bush has had aphid issues before, maybe they could smell them or maybe they knew from last time and were seeing if they had come back/were waiting to see?
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Jun 2, 2022 10:13
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Oh absolutely! Ants keep a detailed mental map of their surroundings that also sort of remains visible/smellable for them as the colony keeps marking everything with specific pheromones, you can probably imagine this a bit like dudes running around, planting named signs on stuff around you. "Leaf A", "aphid bush", "nectar source" "danger don't go alone" and stuff like that, so if there were aphids before, they certainly will come back later to check on them again. Also, 8-10c is rather cold for them, they will be unable to move properly as soon as the temperature drops below 10c, while below 8c they begin to hibernate, if the temperature remains on that level for a few days. Anything from 4c downwards means their muscles stop functioning entirely. As it was rather cold last night, I can imagine that they were outside foraging as usual when it got too cold, so they cuddled up and waited for the sun to warm them back up.
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Jun 2, 2022 10:54
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I check again today and no ants on the leaves, but those little bastard aphids, tiny little white dudes have appeared, I think they are small young aphids. They knew. They knew!
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Jun 2, 2022 22:20
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Heh chances are that it's not a coincidence either! Often ants go out to collect aphids from all over and place them on a specific plant that convenient for them, they even motivate aphids to breed and protect their babbies to get more, while protecting them from danger. Once a plant is dying from the infestation, they move the aphids again. Big colonies even dig out healthy plants and carry them over for the aphids to feed on after their old home has withered.
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Jun 3, 2022 09:03
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The beginning of Spring we had a tiny infestation of European black ants in our house. We tried to get rid of them by poisoning, vacuum, indiscriminate killing and just keeping the area they kept going to cleaner than ever. None of it seemed to work, but since a few weeks ago they just up and left.  I think they liked the floor heating and with the outside now finally heating up they no longer needed us. But I did get a funny movie of an ant trying to move a bit of bread crust he'd found despite the thing being like 10 times it's size. It spent most of the time pulling it in circles making no progress. Until I rechecked and he'd somehow managed to bring it to their entrance. 
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Jun 3, 2022 10:03
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So I know ants forming supercolonies with other ants is a thing, but is there ever any cooperation with other eusocial creatures, like bees or termites?
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Jun 6, 2022 18:40
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I've never heard of it, other than when ants form a sort of symbiotic relationship with like aphids. You think it could be possible for arboreal ants to cooperate with bees, exchanging protection from other ants for honey but I haven't heard of it. Ants forming supercolonies with other ants is only technically a thing in that scientists have figured out how to trick ants into accepting other ants of different species by blanking their smells until they can't tell each other apart; I'm not sure if its happened in nature? Some ants might ignore smaller ants that they don't see as a threat but I don't think they would share rent.
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Jun 6, 2022 19:23
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Oh no, ants form natural supercolonies all the time, it's the mechanism that we don't yet know much about and why certain species are more likely to do it than others. For some species it is entirely common and normal for, during nupture flights, to get in foreign pregnant queen ants that get added to the colony and make their own babies and forming a supercolony that way. Two or more already grown colonies merging together is a lot rarer, but still happens, a common example would be the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, who do that so successfully that they manage to stand up against much larger and more deadly species due to their endless numbers. They are an invasive species all over the world now after being brought to every continent by humans, forming enormous internationally spanning megacolonies consisting out of thousands of supercolonies and billions of ants. Woodants of various species are also notoriously known to merge together and cooperate, some more than others, but it always depends on what level of cooperation you want to see in order to speak about a supercolony. Ants also form various symbiosis bondings with other species, most of them are plants, where, for example, the ants use their venom as weed killer, destroying growing competing plants in order to boost the growth of their home plants they live in. Leafcutter ants constructing vast mushroom gardens underground to cultivate fungi that they eat from is also a specific form of symbiosis. They also often cooperate with various insects, there are numerous insects that live inside the colonies of ants, either just neutral and tolerated, living off their trash (like the ant bug, Scydmaeninae) or cooperating with each other, where the bugs provide food in form of liquid sweets in exchange for protection and a home. Bees, as in, the usual eusocial honeybees you know, do not like to cooperate with ants a lot, because ants are obsessed with their honey and they do not feel like sharing, so usually it's a rather violent relationship, where ants raid bee hives for their honey and bees launch attacks on identified ant colonies. Often enough, however, ants get together with wasps to get into a war with bees, as the wasps like to kill and eat the bees and the ants provide ground cover and eat whatever falls down from the wasps. So cooperation with eusocial species is usually focused on ant-wasp relationships. Most bee species, however, are not eusocial but solitary bees. Only the honeybees you know and love form hives, they outnumber the other bees massively in pure numbers, but the number of species of bees that are not eusocial at all is by far higher than those that are. Ants sometimes get in touch with those bees, as they also collect pollen and can create sweet liquid stuff and they do not have to feed an entire hive, so they are more willing to share. There are instances where ants relocated their colonies to the breeding ground of solitary wasps or bumblebees (many of them nest in the ground in holes) to protect them and the bees supply the ants with nectar and other food.
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Jun 6, 2022 19:58
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To be clear I wasn't saying "ant's [of a given species] don't form super colonies" they do, like the argentine ants as you mention; I assumed what ninjewtsu was asking about was whether ants of different species could form supercolonies together. And as I understand it, that's considerably more difficult; although googling it now apparently Camponotus Modoc was found to be nesting with various Formica species? That's interesting; gives more realism to my Ant Empire building game  An important note about the argentine ant is in their natural habitat they don't quite form such large super colonies because the genetic diversity is such that the subcolonies eventually break off and compete for resources. The ones that get introduced to other continents don't have this issue, as its a handful of initial queens at first and they have extremely narrow genetic diversity which is why the supercolonies can get so large; with only recently some supercolonies in North America(?) breaking off forming a new cluster that competes with the "original" supercolony.
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Jun 6, 2022 20:21
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Goons Are Great posted:Most bee species, however, are not eusocial but solitary bees. Only the honeybees you know and love form hives Don't forget bumblebees!
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Jun 6, 2022 21:15
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i want a bee that will defend my home like a sort of flying dog.
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Jun 6, 2022 21:39
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what is the evolutionary reason why ants lost their wings (except the ones that gently caress), what factors could've promoted the loss of flight
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Jun 7, 2022 02:10
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GAG, this sounds like a good point to tell us about slaver ants! ninjewtsu posted:what is the evolutionary reason why ants lost their wings (except the ones that gently caress), what factors could've promoted the loss of flight I'd guess this just has to do with efficiency mostly, like if they only really need their wings to spread new colonies then it'd save a lot of energy to only have them for that. Imagine it's just a cost vs benefits thing for the most part?
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Jun 7, 2022 05:07
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i mean being able to fly seems like a pretty good benefit though how does it not help them enough to be worth the cost?
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Jun 8, 2022 04:48
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I think someone mentioned pheromone trails as a possible reason. The idea being that any individual ant is basically pointless if she can't direct her sisters to the stuff she found. And it's kinda hard to leave trails in the air. Of course, honeybees get around that by dancing, but my impression is that they have a more limited interaction/understanding of their surroundings.
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Jun 8, 2022 06:26
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Flight is extremely energetically expensive. If you have a way of life that doesn't absolutely require flight, you can put that energy to much more efficient uses. Insects that do commit to flight for their way of life are pretty much constantly in our faces, so we have a bit of a bias from what we see. Most insects, while capable of flight, either live mostly on foot or have flight only for brief reproductive adult phases. Pretty much the biggest boost you get from flight is for dispersing your genes, so males can travel farther to find unrelated females, and mated female can find suitable nesting sites to lay eggs. This is so useful that it means losing flight entirely is relatively rare in insects, and when it does happen it's often an evolutionary dead end. Ants obviously get their cake and eat it by having flight entirely on the specialist reproductive caste, while gaining extremely efficient ground based foragers. The sheer biomass of ants demonstrates that this is a very effective strategy, many orders of magnitude more than the social wasps and bees combined.
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Jun 9, 2022 18:23
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Collecting aphids: 0.03 calories Tending brood: 0.02 calories Digging tunnels: 0.08 calories Flying around: 36 calories Collecting food: 0.05 calories someone who is good at metabolism please help me budget this. my colony is dying
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Jun 9, 2022 19:28
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Yes, it's mostly this. There are so many factors to consider when it comes to flying, that being focused on the ground is just better. Plus, wasps, bees and ants all have the same ancestors, that most likely were able to fly more regularly than ants do today (but also probably less than what bees and wasps are doing) and so it seems possible that they went the ground way simply because the ecological niches for flying insects were already getting occupied as the genera and species evolved away from their origins. Another insect example of a probably similar situation are roaches, of whom many, many can fly, but most rarely ever do. There are species out there that have fully functional wings and are able to fly just fine and yet they never spend a single second in the air throughout their (quite long) lives. Most of these adapt away from being able to fly altogether in favor of more special abilities that are bound to the ground. Ants are, anatomically, not too different from this, as basically all ants have the technical ability to fly - as in, they do still own the muscles for this - but only the alates, which is the fertilizied queen and the drone caste, are actually developing wings. After mating, queens of modern ant species do not lose their wings either - they actively rip them off and afterwards start consuming their wing muscles as well as the wings in order to provide food for the upcoming first few babies. In that sense, ants almost actively choose not to fly in favor of feeding their offspring.
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Jun 11, 2022 14:19
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One day though we shall genetically engineer ants to make honey like bees and it will be glorious. Yes I know honeypot ants exist but I want ants that make honeycomb like honey bees! Actually why stop there, some ants can work wood, maybe we could genetically engineer "nanomachine" like ants who can build structures for us?
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Jun 11, 2022 18:55
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Raenir Salazar posted:One day though we shall genetically engineer ants to make honey like bees and it will be glorious. great ideas and i for one welcome our new insect overlords
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Jun 11, 2022 20:25
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Raenir Salazar posted:One day though we shall genetically engineer ants to make honey like bees and it will be glorious. We can't even safely interbreed different species of honeybees without accidentally creating murder bees that lust for human blood.
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Jun 11, 2022 20:27
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VictualSquid posted:We can't even safely interbreed different species of honeybees without accidentally creating murder bees that lust for human blood. Stoner Sloth posted:great ideas and i for one welcome our new insect overlords
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Jun 11, 2022 21:16
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I mean there unironically already are vampire ants that feed on blood, it's only a matter of time until they get together with the honeypot ants to capture medium to large sized mammals, extract their blood and store it in combs for later consumption.
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Jun 11, 2022 21:55
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Broadly, that's what vulture bees do already except with meat
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Jun 11, 2022 22:10
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So the question is, why did none of us get kidnapped by bees yet to be kept in a hive for later consumption? Or who of you did and is actually a bee in disguise, reveal yourselves
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Jun 14, 2022 07:29
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