Hello Explorer!

The past week has been one of Celebration! If you missed it I have surpassed the 1K subscribers mark on YouTube! They say that the first 1K is the most difficult to reach and after that it grows much easier. I will let you know in a while if I agree with this or not.

In the light of celebrating, I have also found some of the coolest and most specialized ants I've seen in quite a long time! The Schwab's Razorjaws Ants - Leptogenys schwabi. The best part is that I got a founding colony under a pot outside our back door!

The Razorjaws are so cool because they have very specific feeding habits and odd colony structure. Their diet consists almost exclusively of isopods (also known as woodlice) and termites. For the majority of the year they will consume isopods, but during September and October they will feast actively on termites after the first rains fell.

The colony structure is intriguing as most species within the Leptogenys genus will have a single ergatoid queen in the colony. An ergatoid queen is a reproductively capable queen that resembles a normal worker in the colony, meaning she doesn't have wings like other alate queens. The Shwab's Razorjaw will have multiple ergatoid queen's with one dominant queen. If the dominant were to die, one of the other mated queens will take over the dominancy and start producing the eggs to keep the colony going!

Weekly Top Shot: A Shwabi Razorjaw Ant

The latest Video: They are better than you think!

Antlions are Natures MASTER TRAPPERS!

Antlions build the the perfect trap to capture their favorite prey, Ants! In this video we delve into the lives of antlions and see how they build the cone s...