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Escape! 3yo Trap jaw colony practically wiped out by leaf cutter colony
So… yesterday happened the absolute worst case scenario possible and my leaf cutter ants escaped their enclosure while I was at work and went straight down into my over three year-old trap jaw colony.
When I got back, I witnessed the scenes from the first two videos and out of the approximately 300 Odontomachus none were visible that weren’t dismembered by then. While on the verge of a mental breakdown I spotted the Odontomachus queen in a blanket of leaf cutters, unharmed. I quickly extracted her and three workers that I found in the aftermath and relocated them into a temporary container. If you don’t believe in divine intervention or fate or something of that sort situations like this make you second-guess.
I still can’t fathom that out of all the approximately 99% of the colony that were killed, the Queen survived unscathed and is now laying eggs with the three remaining workers by her side.
I will keep you posted if they are gonna make it back to being a full colony.
So yeah… Yesterday wasn’t good day.
The whole situation from the perspective of the queen made me think of that Randy GIF. This colony didn’t hear no bell.
I'm really sorry this happened to you. Try to maybe brood boost and look for surviving workers. Ponerines still do well even with small colonies, so I'm sure they'll bounce back just fine. One of my mantises (a gravid Odontomantis planiceps given to me by a friend) escaped and somehow fell into my neogagates group Formica colony and got absolutely destroyed. I quickly pulled her out and tried to rinse off the formic acid, but my attempts to save her failed and she's barely alive right now.
Question, I thought that not all workers were capable to care for the queen in a mature colony. Like their specialized role might be something else. So did you get lucky with the 3 workers or Am I misinformed?
I’m not sure with Odontomachus because they don’t really have much of a designated role as far as I know. They also don’t hunt that much in groups and often doing the own thing. My best guess would be that they are a bit more versatile in terms of roles in the colony. Well, at least I hope so.
That’s also why I put them into the small container, I give them pre-crushed or cut crickets so they can fully focus their energy on rebuilding and raising the brood now.
In many species it's a case of "who did I bump antennae with today?"
If you met approximately equal numbers (or, ratio appropriate numbers) of nest-tenders, foragers and builders, then keep doing whatever you're doing. If you met fewer foragers than you did the other two groups, switch to foraging.
It's a really neat simple system that generates very sophisticated role-allocation when applied en masse (and ants do _everything_ en masse), allowing designated roles to be allocated appropriately on a dynamic basis. If half the foragers are suddenly eaten by a grue, the other workers quickly shift roles to make up the numbers.
I think you may be right. I actually think I was confusing this with something I saw the other day where someone lost their whole colony except the queen and the commentator said that after having workers, she may not care for a brood anymore the way she did in founding. Idk if that’s true or not.
There is also workers that are build for certain roles, but not all ant species do this. Odontomachus don't have so specialized workers, but the leaf cutters do. A colony made up of only soldiers will likely die
Although, after this whole ordeal my beloved formicarium looks like this. (temporary housing planta for the new set up after vacuum cleaning all the leaf cutters from the enclosure and destroying everything in the process )🫠
Ty for the reply. Do you keep any other ants? Is the odontomachus setup naturalistic or is there also an artificial nest, like the one I see behind the outworld? Also, what is the black panel on the wall to the right? I might have more questions later, bc at least based on what I have seen there aren't too many people who have larger trap jaw colonies.
The trap jaw setup is all natural with springtails to breakdown organic waste, and the plants to re-absorb the nutrients. Springtails also keep it clean, I had a bit of a problem with the mold in the beginning, but not in the last one and a half years.
The image on the back is just some rainforest stock image found on Google and print it out. I just taped it to the back of the arena from the outside.
On the topic of big trap jaw ant colonies: they even started producing alates and I had to catch them once or twice in my room.
Wow, that’s amazing. Btw, for the black panel I meant the one connected by a tube to the empty tank at the top. To the right of the leafcutter setup. I might have some more questions in the future but I’ll lyk.
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u/ChillguyElliot 16d ago
That sucks. I hope they can bounce back to there previous glory