Abnormalities lead to questions – Issue #66

Hello Explorer,

A few weeks ago, while we were visiting Kruger National Park, I had the privilege of seeing Tetramorium gladstonei, the sister species of Tetramorium sericieventre (See a photo of T. sericeiventre in this newsletter).

It was not merely just seeing the species that was wonderful, but also the odd behaviour that I observed outside of the nest that had me flabbergasted. There were two dealate queens (queens that has shed their nuptial flight wings) outside of the nest. It is not so much seeing the queens outside the nest that was so interesting, but more the behaviour of the two queens.

These two queens were performing tasks that is normally associated with the worker caste of ants. They were busy moving pebbles and larger pieces of sand from the nest with the workers. The one queen also assisted some workers to pull a prey insect into the nest when they had it close enough to the nest entrance.

The workerlike behaviour that these queens exhibited is completely contradictory to what is currently believed about the queen caste in ants. They are usually not very active and rarely leave the nest once they start the colony.

I do however, think that neither of the two queens that I observed outside of the nest are the colonies egg laying queen. I rather hypothesise that these two queens are slave queens, which had an unsuccessful nuptial flight and never mated. Thus, they unable to start a colony of their own, and were caught and enslaved by the colony.

For the colony that enslaved the two queens it would mean that they have two large “worker” ants now. Tetramorium does not have a soldier or major caste and, it would greatly benefit a colony to capture and enslave unmated queens to do some heavy lifting around the nest.

Do you have another hypothesis on why these two queens would be acting so strange? Would you like to see me test this hypothesis in future to determine what is happening?

If you would like to send me a message with your answers, feel free to do so on Instagram @abugmanslife or via email to [email protected].

Weekly Top Shot: Out of Place