Sydney ant identification help?

Help with identifying the species your ants

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Numbat
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:34 am
Location: New South Wales, Australia

Sydney ant identification help?

Post: # 64613Post Numbat
Sat Oct 05, 2019 7:43 am

Hi, is anyone able to tell from these grainy photos if this is likely to be a queen ant?
https://imgur.com/a/USSnPAO
I'm completely new to ant collecting and I have a very old phone with poor quality camera and not a very good magnifying glass.
It is spring in Sydney and we had a rain storm last night. I found 2 of these ants, which looked bigger than the other black ants nearby. The other ants were scurrying around moving dirt and what looked like eggs. But these were just wandering off. I can't see if they have wing scars or not but after capture, I observed one tending to it's bottom a lot.
Sorry about the poor quality photos but any information would be helpful.
Thanks.

LasiusSapien
Posts: 274
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:37 pm
Location: Bristol

Re: Sydney ant identification help?

Post: # 64615Post LasiusSapien
Sat Oct 05, 2019 11:33 am

ok that looks like green head ant so i'm thinking its a member of the Rhytidoponera sp. which makes id-ing queens quite hard as they look the same as the workers just with slightly bigger bum, there's some side by side pic's in this wiki page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green-head_ant
1x Lasius Niger - early forging stage - 60-100 workers
1x Messor Barbarus - founding stage - <20 workers
1x Camponotus Turkestanus - claustral stage - 1 nanitic + brood
1x Odontoponera Transversa - semi-claustral stage - no eggs

Numbat
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:34 am
Location: New South Wales, Australia

Re: Sydney ant identification help?

Post: # 64620Post Numbat
Sat Oct 05, 2019 10:23 pm

Thanks! I'll look them up.
I'm not sure if it's that green but I'll try to get a better magnifying glass to check.

Numbat
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:34 am
Location: New South Wales, Australia

Re: Sydney ant identification help?

Post: # 64622Post Numbat
Sun Oct 06, 2019 3:56 am

I just found another one today from the same area, which is bigger than the 2 yesterday, so now I'm not entirely sure the first 2 are queens. Will wait and see! The new one does have a slightly metallic sheen.

I also found one with wings in my backyard, but I let it fly off.

Numbat
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:34 am
Location: New South Wales, Australia

Re: Sydney ant identification help?

Post: # 64636Post Numbat
Mon Oct 07, 2019 1:57 am

I found another 2 today of these ants. It was a bright sunny day so I saw they definitely have a green metallic sheen, especially the head.

Slightly better pics of one:
https://imgur.com/a/1Zti1UX

Can anyone tell me if this is likely to be a queen?

And if so, I read they are semi-claustral. Hints on what to feed them?

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