ID: Southwestern Ontario Canada

[Batspiderfish]

Hey Batspiderfish did these new pics give any more clarity ?

I'm going with Formica subsericea.

[kykel09]

Ive updated a few more pictures in the original links with some more shots but the last link wont update so here's a new onehttps://imgur.com/a/fBIgGrV of the would be 2 males. Ill note the one with the more slender pointed gaster is perhaps dying. Upon closer inspection of the tube with 3 in it is seems 1 of them might be different. Let me know if these are detailed enough and or witch ants you need better shots of.

I did some google foo! and Formica sp. kind of confused me as I did not see many sp. Formica results. certainly not any with information specific to Formica sp. Does sp. stand for something specific or is it a scientific suffix? I referenced the above linked site for my local species and none matched sp.

I also looked here http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Formica_species_groups and this immediately goes over my head in complexity.

Thanks for your patience.

Cichlid

The very first photos your posted were Formica sp. The sp just means a species of Formica. Formica is your genus but when you see Formica sp it means they know it's a Formica but not necessarily sure which species which is usually harder to isolate. Yours looks like maybe a Formica fusca or Formica subsericea but you'd have to do more research to narrow it down. The photos make it a bit hard to ID. To clarify, I'm talking about the first queen you posted that has shiny, kind of silvery hairs on her.

However, this updated set of imgur photos you posted are not formica. The second (dead looking) ant is a male. Notice how it almost looks like a wasp with a very pointy gastor. The other queen, I have no idea but I don't think she's Formica. Her mandables are not Formica mandables. She has very large mandables that just out, which is common in some parasite species but I don't know if she's a parasite queen. She also doesn't have a large hump on her thorax so she could even be semi-claustral. Which means if she is, you will have to feed her as she won't metabolize fat stores and will starve to death otherwise. But I would wait for Batspiderfish. He's much better at ID'ing than I am.