#polyergus

[apsciencebylyn]

BUCKET LIST ANTS!

I found a species of Amazon ant (Polyergus longicornis) in 2022, including that fantastic gynandromorph, and that nest is still there and I check on it regularly. But there's another more rarely seen species to be found here. Polyergus oligergus raids Formica archboldi (the skull collecting ants, so called because they pile up trapjaw ant heads outside their nests. I'm not making this up) nests and carries back larvae; and yesterday evening, I witnessed a raid and found the nest! 😍

I kinda lost my mind at the sight of the competing swarms of ants so I didn't get any good pictures of the raid, and the raiders trekked 90 feet through thick brush back to their nest, which also made shooting difficult. But damn, this made my day!

Polyergus oligergus is red, Formica archboldi is black

The Formica nest is under the oak tree, and I'm standing by the Polyergus nest. Quite a long ways! I paced it as just over 90 feet. The Polyergus nest itself was in the middle of a clump of grass, an inch or two above the ground. Never would have found it myself.

Pile of trap-jaw heads around a Formica archboldi nest, from a few years ago:

Anyway, spend enough time wandering in well-preserved places and you'll see wild things. ❤️

[futurebird]

Polyergus the evil stepmom ant

This ant is a cradle robber and a homewrecker. She'll steal your sister. She'll kill your mama. All her daughters are just as mean. It's like Cinderella. Evil step sisters move in, poor Formica ants do all the work. But instead of going to the ball, these girls steal babies.

[senadimell]

I'm working on some fanart for the awesome story Polyergus by RockyMountainRattlesnake on ao3. Here's a preliminary sketch for something I'll either ink or watercolor--anything stand out or look a little off? (I haven't completely done the wrinkles on the sleeves or the details on the console yet because they're a little finicky, and the coat will be darker).

[ghreba]

نمل Polyergus أو ما يعرف بنمل الأمازون، يغزو مستعمرات النمل الأخرى ،و يستعبد النمل الموجود بها ،و يعمل النمل المهزوم كعبيد حتي الموت!

[atramentum-librarium]

Villainous, slave-raiding... ants?

The genus of ants Polyergushave evolved to have a very bizarre life-cycle entirely dependent on a second genus of ants, Formica.

A newly hatched Polyergus queen cannot take care of herself, and immediately sets off to find a Formica nest. Once she has found one, she locates, dethrones and kills the colony's queen, and takes command of the Formica (who readily adopt her as their new queen). If the Formica colony is small, the Polyergus queen may wait to kill the Formica queen until a large enough brood is established. The Formica feed, clean and take care of the Polyergus queen, and raise her young for her.

The hatched Polyergus workers are basically useless in the hive, having entirely lost their instincts to take care of themselves, and dependent entirely on the Formica for nearly everything. Without a Formica queen, however, the population of Formica in the hybrid nest (which usually has a ratio of up to 5 slaves per slaver) eventually shrinks as they die off and are not replaced. When the numbers get low enough, Polyergus workers will set off to find a Formica nest and raid it, carrying off pupae and eggs back to their home.

This very complicated and lengthy parasitic relationship between Polyergus and Formica quite often does not work out for the Polyergus, resulting in very few properly established raider colonies. Curiously enough, these raids are also mostly bloodless (save the regicide in queen-killing), and Formica tend to just move to the side and wait for the raid to end instead of getting involved. Scientists are also trying to encourage human cultural models other than slave-raiding to explain the life-cycle of Polyergus, such as referring to Polyergus as pirates or Formica as "helper-ants" or domesticated animals.

Word of the Day - "Spoilate" : to rob, plunder or despoil