Hello ,

This story starts three weeks ago, when I found a queen ant that was more than just difficult to identify!

Upon collecting the queen, I realized that it is from the Camponotus or sugar ant genus, but I had no clue what species it was. After quite a long tedious search and investigation it was decided that the queen is a Camponotus rufoglaucus (Velvet Sugar Ant) queen. It took so long to ID because the specimens on Antweb look completely different to the one I caught, you can view the specimen photographs here: Camponotus rufoglaucus ).

This, however, is very abnormal. Why do you ask? Well it is very uncommon that you find an ant queen first without encountering a worker or soldier of that species. It took me two weeks to collect a worker and a soldier of this species!

Just yesterday, I found a large colony of these ants and then the picture of this species started to become clearer to me. The colony was under a rock that I flipped, and to my surprise less than 10% of the workers had the abnormal colour form of the red thorax and head with the golden-green gaster. The other 90% of the worker ants in the colony under the rock looked dark like the ones typically seen on antweb. All of the soldiers in the colony and all of the workers that I encountered outside the nest had the red and golden-green colouration. I have added a side profile photo that I took of one of the workers, as that is the best way to explain the beautiful colouration!

I have discussed this with some knowledgeable people and we hypothesize that the dark coloured individuals are potentially young ants that still need to develop the beautiful colour patterns. How they develop the colour patterns is a question on its own, it could be as the exoskeleton hardens and matures, or it could be the 'tan' the ants get when they spend their time outside of the nest.

Weekly Top Shot: