Care Sheet for InsectsAverage Rating Given To This Care Sheet Is 5.00 (1=lowest, 5=highest) Last Updated: 12/17/2006 |
Main Category: | Non-Reptile/Amphibian |
Sub Category: | Insects |
Care Sheet Submitted By: | Reacker |
Years Experience: | 5 to 10 Years |
Species: | Harvester Ants, and other ants. |
Other Species or Phases this Care Sheet May Cover: | Other harvesters ants and a large variety of other ground dwelling ants. |
Sexing and Characteristics: | Workers are always female and may or may not vary in size depending on the species. In most species workers can not lay eggs that will develop as females, though some workers can lay eggs that turn into males. (Very, very, very few species have workers that can become fully reproductive. The only ones I know of exist in Australia)
Soldiers are always female and in most species are the largest workers or females that may or may not have developed special mandibles and other characteristics vital to the annihilation of enemies such as largely increased size. Soldiers occurs only in one or two species of harvester ants, but not P. rugosus.
Queens are generally the largest ants in the colony and can be found near the surface during the first warm week of spring. After that they will usually be found at the bottom of the nest or if you get lucky under a rock that the colony has built the nest mound around. Queens can still occasionally be found on the surface during early summer as well, but the later into the season it gets the less your chances are of collecting one without a full scale excavation of the nest which is sometimes as deep as 20 feet. The queens will have a large boxy thorax and an elongated abdomen full of eggs in some species, not so much in harvester species, though older queens abdomens do tend to be larger than those of younger queens. During the first half of the year your may find winged ants in the nest, those are virgin queens called alates that will only be able to produce males until they do mate. Once the queens mate they will shed their wings and start a nest on their own.
Males are a bit smaller than queens in this species, but in others they are immensely smaller. The have wings that they never shed and very large eyes. Their bodies are also usually streamlined for maximum speed to pursue females during the mating flight. Males usually only live about a month or less and have no purpose but mating so they are even incapable of feeding themselves, working, or exchanging food with other ants.(the process of sharing food between workers is called tropholax). After mating they all die within a day or two.
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Mostly Active During: | Day |
Substrate and Water Needs: | I fill my aquarium 2/3 the way with sand that has been finely sifted after being collected around the area and in the same habitat that my colony was collected in. If you want you can bake your sand for an hour at a temp. of 400 degrees to kill any mites that can kill your colony or annoying sage brush seeds that have a tendency to sprout and crowd the terrarium. When you first apply the sand in the aquarium make it so that is moist enough to stay moist for 2 or 3 weeks so that the ants have enough time to excavate tunnels in every part of the aquarium. Be sure to keep parts of the sand relatively moist as ants die quickly when not provided with moisture. The ants will also need a place that is bone dry in the aquarium so it is very important to keep up a moisture variant. This also helps keep the tunnels from collapsing, though the sand will eventually compact in to a cement like consistency. |
Lighting and UVB: | No extra lighting is necessary, though keeping your ants in constant dark could cause them to become diurnal as well as nocturnal. Natural sunlight is ok since the ants seem to enjoy it, just make sure the ants have enough tunnels to hide in in case they choose to completely avoid the light and also before exposing them to sunlight. A red filter heat lamp placed 2 feet away will encourage the ants to bring the brood up the surface to bask in the heat. As ants don’t respond to red light very much the ants will think it is dark and will thus feel very secure. |
Temperatures and Humidity: | Room temperature is fine for them. No extra humidity is needed for harvester ants as long as parts of their substrate are moist. |
Heating and Equipment: | For a stand, try and get a stable wire frame stand that has an open bottom so you can see the bottom chambers of the aquarium which is were the queen likes to stay and were the ants place most of their brood. |
Caging Provided: | While I am currently using a ten gallon aquarium to house my small colony I would suggest using a 20 or 30 gallon for their permanent home since they will quickly out grow a ten gallon aquarium. With my colony no lid was necessary since these ants are terrible climbers, but you may want one just in case your colony is a good climber or you get a different species of ants. A fine mesh or glass lid will do fine. If you use an air tight glass lid be sure to open the lid once or twice a day for a minute or two to allow fresh air in.
The actual name for a container for keeping ants in is Formicarium so please use it from now on. |
Diet: | Omnivorous |
Description of Diet: | The ants themselves eat very little, but the larva need constant food, mainly protein.
The ants subside mainly on seeds that fall of wild plants, in captivity it is ok to use most seeds no bigger than a sunflower seed. Grass and millet seeds work best. Make sure that no pesticides are mixed in or contaminating them. Oats work good.
For easy access protein a piece of lunch meat will work, especial turkey. The main thing I use is flightless fruit flies in an amount directly proportional to the approximate amount of larva in the colony. Make sure to freeze the flies and any other insect that you feed to them in advance to kill off any parasites and so that it is easier and safer to for the ants to collect the protein. Harvester ants are mainly scavengers in nature, especially when it comes to collecting other insects. Though I have once seen a group of them in the wild taking down a large defenseless caterpillar. |
Supplements, Nutrition and Usage: | Make sure their diet is varied as a monotonous diet will fail, apply crushed vitamin pill to sugar or honey water mix. No other supplements needed. |
Maintenance: | Keep the aquarium free of vibrations. Try not to move them about very often or switch them from aquariums manually. Instead attach a bridge or something that will allow the ants to move to the new home on their own.
From early November to early March the ants will need to go into hibernation. Place the aquarium in a place that is about as cold as the interior of a refrigerator and will stay that way without much variation. |
Some Words on this Species: | This is merely the simplest way of taking care of this or other ground dwelling species. Making an advanced care sheet that includes several of the many other ant culturing techniques would take more time than I am willing to use. There are several other forums in half a dozen or more languages on ants that all will get you started better than this "small" guide will get you. I suggest that if you are any bit serious in keeping ants, to find one and become an active posting member. Often, Professional Myrmecologists are regular posters on these sites and are very willing to help out answering questions. One forum I suggest is The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Message Board, based in the U.S. Note, please don’t go to forums asking how to keep ants to feed your lizards, its not practical as the growth rate of any colony is eclipsed by the consumption rate of a horny toad lizard or any other reptile (trust me, I’ve kept them before).
Queens of this species can live up to twenty years, upon her death the colony can not usually acquire a new queen(I have heard of it happening but only once or twice in captivity so don’t even try introducing a new one to the colony) and will quickly decline.
Workers live about a year and males even less.
Never use the increasingly available gel ant farms for keeping colonies in. There are several problems to them:
1. The gel does not provide the proper nutritional requirements for a queened colony with brood
2. Only larger ants can dig in the gel
3. The gel will break down after a while and turn into slush
4. Ants in this type of formicarium do very little after initially excavating their tunnels
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