Questions about Pheidole megacephala!!

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LIExoticBreeders
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Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:41 am
Location: Bay Shore, NY

Questions about Pheidole megacephala!!

Post: # 94094Post LIExoticBreeders
Thu Jun 30, 2022 7:46 am

Hey everyone. Just had some quick questions regarding Pheidole megacephala ant nuptial flights. I know that this is a polymorphic and polygynos species, that can have many nests joined together to create super colonies. So here's my question: being that they band together with many dozens or even hundreds of queens to form super colonies, when they leave for nuptial flight, after they mate, do they just come right back to the nests they left from and just join the group, or do they form nests of their own?
Reason I ask this is, I watched a nuptial flight happening this morning around 3:30am. I found a few ants in the process of taking their wings off about 2 hours later. But, I was walking around waiting to see them land on the ground and start looking for a nesting site. And I want to know if I should have stayed by one of the 3 nests that were involved with the mating flight, that I saw.
And second question is: with just 1 queen, what is an average colony size?
Thanks in advance everyone.
26 colonies and counting. Ant love forever.

SYUTEO
Posts: 1395
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:58 am
Location: Malaysia

Re: Questions about Pheidole megacephala!!

Post: # 94098Post SYUTEO
Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:33 am

Note: some of this info is from my own observations of them in the wild, so some things may be different for you.

The dealate queens can found colonies on their own as I have personally seen a young colony with about 3-5 nanitics and a single queen in the wild. However they may also be able to join already established colonies without getting killed.

Not sure about how big a colony is with just one queen but one colony I found with about 2 queens and possibly more somewhere deeper in the nest has about 300-600 workers.

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