The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Are ants able to form associations with insects that give them honeydew if they had not passed that behavior on from a previous colony? I heard queen alates will sometimes carry these insects during nuptial flight. My question more specifically is: Is the association learned, pheromonal, spontaneous or other?
Just to clarify in case my question isnt clear...
In general do ants who form associations with aphids for example learn this behavior from a past colony who also had this behavior passed on? Can ants learn this behavior generations removed from aphid keeping ancestors by just stumbling on the aphids?
I appreciate any links to information about the subject, I bet its very complicated. I'm curious if someone keeping ants who are just eating what the keeper feeds them can learn to "farm" aphids in captivity.
Thanks for your time!

Interesting question. If they farm this aphids for milions of years i think it is an instinct. I personaly never heard of any ant keepers that have aphids for the ant colony to farm. I think it would be hard to mentain the aphids.

DictaruraSrl thank you for your response. I should mention that I did read that aphids can release pheromones that the ants can sense and helps them determine which aphids they will choose to associate with. That’s interesting to hear that you haven’t seen aphids kept in captivity with ants. I remember on AntsCanada YouTube he showed aphids in his formicarium but the ants didn’t seem to be associating with them.

Hey AntsCanada's youtube has a video on his yellow crazy ants who had aphids in their terrarium and they slowly catch on to it starting with only going to the honeydew and not the aphids directly. Then they slowly came around to tending them later on in the vids. So i do not see why your ants would not do the same.

the only problem with having aphids in your formicarium is that you need live plants for that and a lot of ant keepers don't have time or colonies big enough for a formicarium that can sustain tons of plant life