Hi! Today I was viewing my large Nylanderia colony, and suddenly noticed something bizarre happening. One of the male alates was attempting to mate with a queen alate in the outworld. However, both ants belong to the same colony. This is strange because ants normally only mate during nuptial flights, but there was no nuptial flight taking place at the time, and it is the wrong time of year for this to occur.
The strange mating attempts by the male alates were completely random, to say the least. The males’ desire to mate was so brazen that I even observed a couple of occasions where males were trying to mate with each other! In the wild, this basically never happens, meaning that this behavior may have never been observed before. The queen alates were furiously attempting to kick the males off of them, but the males put up a serious fight, holding on with all their might. If any of the males were successful at fertilizing any of the queens, I will find out in a few weeks’ time.
