The difference is astounding! – Issue #106

Hello Explorer,
Almost one year ago to date, a friend and I were in the right place at the right time, and we managed to collect a few Anoplolepis custodiens or Pugnacious ant queens. Many of you will know these ants as crazy ants, as they run around like mad and quickly run up your legs and start biting you if you stand still for a second.
One of my clearest memories of these ants happened around nine years. I bought a bottle of coke, and before opening it, it underwent an accidental drop test. The result was coke spraying out all over the bottle and the bottle being very sticky after this. I placed my coke down on the grass and started setting up my bow for archery practice. After setting up my bow and getting everything ready I wanted to take a sip of my coke, but the entire bottle was covered with ants, Pugnacious ants to be exact. It was at that moment that I realized they are quite fond of their sugar. After archery practice however, all the ants were gone, and my bottle of coke was clean and no sign of stickiness whatsoever. They managed to clean it in less than 40 minutes. That is impressive for their tiny size.
When I collected the queens last year, I wanted to try an experiment. We know from observations of their natural behaviour that Anoplolepis custodiens workers tend to drag newly mated queens into their nest and make them part of the colony, effectively they kidnap young queens. They will also join forces with nearby colonies, which likely also have multiple queens. These two traits, young queen kidnapping and colonies joining forces, are the two traits that make them a species that can form super colonies. These super colonies can cover vast areas of land, and I’ve seen some that cover over ten hectares! My question was could a multiple queen colony be started by putting two or more queens together into one test tube?
I hypothesized that it should be possible for two Anoplolepis cusodiens queens to start a colony together, as it is part of their nature to have multiple queens in a single nest. Further to this I wanted to see what the difference in nanitic (first smaller worker ants a queen raise) are between a single and multiple queen colony.
And so an almost year-long experiment began. I set up two single queens each in their own test tube and one test tube with three queens together. Being Anoplolepis custodiens, the queens overwintered (they went throughout winter without laying eggs or eating) before laying their first eggs in September 2023. They all managed to successfully raise their larvae and during this time I noticed something very strange with the three-queen colony. They did not mix their eggs or brood at all. This was unexpected, but I couldn’t risk stopping the experiment due to something a little strange. I also noticed that only two out of the three queens had eggs and small larvae they tended to. During the last stage of larval development of the first hatched larvae the two queens packed their eggs, brood, and pupae into one big pile and all three queens huddled together close the pile. The pile of eggs, brood, and larvae of the three-queen colony was about three times the size of the single queen colonies’.

When the first ants started eclosing (emerging from their cocoons as adult ants) the strangest thing happened. The third queen, who didn’t lay any eggs, was killed, dismantled, and eaten. Thus, the three-queen colony became a two queen colony. This might sound all normal, but most of the other ant species in which multiple queen colonies are not possible the queens usually kill one another as soon as they start laying eggs and the other queen ventures to close. In some rare cases they do manage to both raise young in the same test tube, but they never live very long as a single colony, and one queen is always either killed or kicked out of the nest to die on the outside
I hypothesise that the queens used the third queen as fresh food for the second generation of eggs that they laid and kept the queen alive to ensure that the food stays fresh.
The number of ants in the two-queen colony is still much greater that the colonies with single queens.
The experiments with the two-queen colony will continue over the next few year, and I believe that where the results I got now might be astonishing and interesting, the results to come for the next experiments might prove to be one of those instances where I will see that the experiment was a VERY BAD idea to start with. I will still continue, because if we do not explore, we will never discover something new. Either way, I will have something to share with you in future about this colony!
Do you have any name suggestions for the two-queen colony? Think of something that sounds like a bad idea to begin with…
Have you ever encountered Pugnacious ants before? Did you know they are one of the species that create super colonies?

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