An observation I've made with Parasitic Lasius Queens and supporting research, Severn MD
Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:24 am
Hi all,
So, I've had a suspicion of something since last year and that is that parasitic queens are semi-claustral. Now, I tried research this and turns out nobody really seems to know this. My theory comes from this.
Since summer of last year, I've caught 9 parasitic queens. Them being a variety of Lasius Umbratus, Lasius claviger, and Lasius lapites. At least, from my own research this is the closest I can confirm the species.
Now, 8 of the queens have all died at this point, and most of the time they die within only a week or two of catching them. The exception, ant number 9, is the one queen that I have kept an active supply of honey in her test tube, even through hibernation last year. Now, I had the suspicion that they were starving to death as I personally don't see the biological point of a parasite queen being claustral. Nature has a way of weeding out pointless adaptions and as parasitic queens invade other nests shortly after nuptial flights, there is little reason to need large fat stores. The fact that my one queen with an active food supply has survived so long whilst all my others without food died adds some evidence to this.
However, I still wanted to see if I could find some supporting evidence, and boy did I. Now, it's a long read, For your viewing pleasure, I discovered a dissertation written on a capture and study of over 100 parasite Lasius queens. The ants were separated into various groups and various tests were performed. In the paper, every single parasite queen that wasn't fed died within 20 days of capture. Additionally, 40 queens were put into hibernation to test whether they would start a colony themselves (without hosts) post-hibernation. All 40 queens failed to lay a single egg. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This paper provided so much good information. It also really shed some light on the various host/parasite systems such as which host colonies species particular parasite queens are more successful with.
I've provided the link for the paper below. It's a free download. Feel free to take a look if you're interested. I'm hoping it helps me to perform my experiment to introduce my current lasius claviger queen to a neoniger host setup.
Resource:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227130142_Colony_founding_and_social_parasitism_in_Lasius_Acanthomyops
So, I've had a suspicion of something since last year and that is that parasitic queens are semi-claustral. Now, I tried research this and turns out nobody really seems to know this. My theory comes from this.
Since summer of last year, I've caught 9 parasitic queens. Them being a variety of Lasius Umbratus, Lasius claviger, and Lasius lapites. At least, from my own research this is the closest I can confirm the species.
Now, 8 of the queens have all died at this point, and most of the time they die within only a week or two of catching them. The exception, ant number 9, is the one queen that I have kept an active supply of honey in her test tube, even through hibernation last year. Now, I had the suspicion that they were starving to death as I personally don't see the biological point of a parasite queen being claustral. Nature has a way of weeding out pointless adaptions and as parasitic queens invade other nests shortly after nuptial flights, there is little reason to need large fat stores. The fact that my one queen with an active food supply has survived so long whilst all my others without food died adds some evidence to this.
However, I still wanted to see if I could find some supporting evidence, and boy did I. Now, it's a long read, For your viewing pleasure, I discovered a dissertation written on a capture and study of over 100 parasite Lasius queens. The ants were separated into various groups and various tests were performed. In the paper, every single parasite queen that wasn't fed died within 20 days of capture. Additionally, 40 queens were put into hibernation to test whether they would start a colony themselves (without hosts) post-hibernation. All 40 queens failed to lay a single egg. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This paper provided so much good information. It also really shed some light on the various host/parasite systems such as which host colonies species particular parasite queens are more successful with.
I've provided the link for the paper below. It's a free download. Feel free to take a look if you're interested. I'm hoping it helps me to perform my experiment to introduce my current lasius claviger queen to a neoniger host setup.
Resource:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227130142_Colony_founding_and_social_parasitism_in_Lasius_Acanthomyops