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POLYGYNOUS Queens!

by NJ Ant FanPosted on May 23, 2021May 23, 2021
Two Nylanderia queens with brood

I have some exciting news!

Over the past week, I found over twenty Nylanderia parvula queens. One day I noticed two queens outside that were somewhat near each other, so I caught them both and put them in a test tube as an experiment to see if they were polygynous. Polygynous queens band together to build a nest and found a multi-queen colony. The first sign that they were polygynous was that when I moved them into a test tube, both queens immediately ran inside. To my surprise, the next day, the pair had a small brood pile! They are also very tolerant of each other, indicating that they might be polygynous.

Polygynous queen ants
Here are the two queens with their large pile of young.

A few days later, I looked again and saw that the brood pile had grown a lot. This means that both queens are likely mated. I checked some of my solo queens for comparison and noticed that their brood piles were smaller than what these two queens have.

Posted in First brood, Species

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Goodbye, Onetenna :( :( :(
New colonies!

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