Pavement Ants eating Shortbread

Good news! The number of pavement ant colonies I care for has increased from one to five in just a few days. Colony one has six nanitics. Colony two has an amazing thirteen nanitics! Colony three has six nanitics. Colony four has two nanitics. Colony five has eight nanitics. The colony featured today is the largest colony, colony two.

Colony two’s brood pile. Why are five nanitics, the queen, and a pupa looking at the camera???

Tetramorium immigrans pupa — A close-up of one of the pupae. The light-colored nanitic to the left is waiting for its exoskeleton to harden, having recently eclosed.

Tetramorium immigrans nanitics eating shortbread — Two nanitics have their first taste of shortbread.

Today I decided to feed them shortbread to see how they would react. The colonies loved eating shortbread for the first time. This was great to see, as shortbread is easily obtainable.

Tetramorium immigrans colony in a test tube — Another angle on colony two. They seem to like hiding behind the cotton.

Unfortunately, It hasn’t rained here in well over a week, and it is rather dry. because of this, I haven’t been able to catch new queens for some time now. After checking the weather, it will probably rain on Monday and Tuesday, finally allowing me to catch some more queen ants.

See you next week!

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