school project questions (species)

[antPWS]

Hi there!
I'm from The Netherlands, so in advance sorry for my bad English. I don't know if I made this topic in the correct category? If not, feel free to move it!

I need to do a project for school and I chose to experiment with ants. And now I have a few questions about it.

I want to experiment with ants and their pheromone trails (fastest path). Something like the Double Bridge Experiment, in context with Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). I caught 5 Lasius niger queens and they have between 5-15 workers, but that's not nearly enough to experiment with. I also had a little Lasius flavus colony, but they never really grew and when I was away for 3 weeks (no worries they got fed) the queen died . My question is, could I use Messor barbarus for this experiment? They are the easiest to get hold of "second-hand", with bigger colonies not being to pricey. And if I could use Messor barbarus, how big of a colony would I need (worker wise)?

If you know other fun pheromone experiment please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

[SolenopsisKeeper]

Hi there!
I'm from The Netherlands, so in advance sorry for my bad English. I don't know if I made this topic in the correct category? If not, feel free to move it!

I need to do a project for school and I chose to experiment with ants. And now I have a few questions about it.

I want to experiment with ants and their pheromone trails (fastest path). Something like the Double Bridge Experiment, in context with Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). I caught 5 Lasius niger queens and they have between 5-15 workers, but that's not nearly enough to experiment with. I also had a little Lasius flavus colony, but they never really grew and when I was away for 3 weeks (no worries they got fed) the queen died . My question is, could I use Messor barbarus for this experiment? They are the easiest to get hold of "second-hand", with bigger colonies not being to pricey. And if I could use Messor barbarus, how big of a colony would I need (worker wise)?

If you know other fun pheromone experiment please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

Pheronomes can be quite hard to detect. I would suggest a larger colony, but I have heard messor is hard to keep contained when they mature. Most 1000 worker colonies will form foraging trails which would make it much easier.

[antPWS]

Thank you for your reply!

Made the same topic in Ant Care and Ant Keeping cause I didn't know if I made it in the correct category. So sorry if I replied quite late, was mainly replying in my other topic .

Do you think 400-500 workers in a Messor barbarus colony could work? Saw one about that size for sale somewhere.

What do you mean with hard to contain when they mature?

Sorry for all the questions