Winter Ant Queen on Trillium

 One of my favorite ant species to photograph are Prenolepis imparis, the Winter Ant. Their queens are beautifully colored, they fly early in the year along side a lot of our earliest native wildflower and sometimes the two "blooms" line up. That's not the case here, but I'm glad to say I didn't have to stage this photo; I walked out in my garden one day and saw it happening.

This is a patch of Trilliums in the garden that mostly divided this year. It's fairly shady and just under our deck. And it was fairly cold in that spot as opposed to locations in the sun.

One of the main factors I look for when going out to spot P. imparis queens is a day with temperatures above 68 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the bare minimum temperature queens of this species need in order to leave the nest. One degree lower and they won't take off, though you may see one or two who have been warmed by the sun taking flight.

I'm at a point in my obsessive plant habit where I have Trilliums now dividing into large clumps and spreading a lot by seed. Lots of other plants too are filling in in places around the garden so chances like this are becoming more common without me having to stage them.

And because it's in my yard I don't have to venture far to find it... though this image isn't a good example of that. She's just moved onto a stick that pushed up one of the Trillium leaves.

While it's great that this happened by chance, it wasn't the best location to have happened. The low lighting meant I should have been using a different camera with a flash on it. I took about 70 photos and only the 7 here were really worth showing. They're nice photos but not the best I've taken of the species.

Here's a shot from last year for example, in a different location with better natural lighting and with the same camera.

The queen was sort of cooperating because it was too cold for her to take off. The whole time I'm taking images though I was thinking, 'Man wouldn't this be better if she was on a flower that was open.'

I did soon after took her to a Trillium sessile that was blooming (and smelled amazing!) but the added sunlight was enough to warm her and she took off shortly after this photo was taken.

Ant Chat: 2020 Winter Ant Flight

Prenolepis imparis, The Winter Ant, was flying here last week. This was the first main flight for the species in my area. This wasn't as nice a video as it could have been partly because I'm getting over Bronchitis and with the current COVID-19 pandemic going on it's not a good thing to be sick in general. Thankfully the ants were good enough to hold a flight in my yard so I didn't need to venture off to a park to find them.

In General, you're looking for a warm day. Queens don't fly unless it's 68F or above out and days when it just hits 68 really aren't good enough. You'll find colonies sending queens up but very few of them are taking off. Days well into the 70's are much much better because as soon as the wind blows or the queens fly off they're not immediately getting chilled.

The next thing to look for are trees, or large wooden structures. The days when this species flies tend to be windy and they need to forage on aphids and scale insects that feed on trees so plants are kind of important with this species. Swarms of males will gather around the trunks of large trees and tall shrubs which is easily seen when looking up towards the sun. Their wings glitter and reflect the sun's rays. I say "wooden structures" because friends in Philadelphia, PA. once reported finding a swarm along a tall wooden fence near one of the many parks they have there in the city. So even in an urban setting you can find this ant.  

Once a swarm has been located you want to hang out a few minutes. Males greatly out number the queens of this species a good 200 to 1 or so. Often there will be several trees near one another so spend a few moment casually walking around the trunk to each and repeat. If there's leaf litter by the trees you may want to kick it away as the queens tend to blend in with it almost perfectly. 

Lastly this is somewhat anecdotal. I've long suspected that males were attracted to the color of the queens along with the pheromones. While recording video and taking pictures I noticed several males land on the monitor to my camera. Further anecdotal evidence, when I was a very young child (not even 10 years old) I had a bright yellow plastic shovel meant for moving sand at the beach. I assume I had used it outside in the winter to play with the snow. And sometime that winter I went out and found it full of male ants. I was too young to say what species it was but I'm pretty sure in guessing they were P. imparis males. It's just one of those things I've been meaning to experiment with. 

This Week in Anting 10/20/2017

What might be the last This Week in Anting of the year.

Best of Ants 2012

Alright I do this every year. I go through the albums I made over the year on Ants, Bees, Butterflies, and Nature.

We start with an awful image of the forest floor I took back in March. Up in the trees the Winter Ants, Prenolepis imparis, were swarming. Normally they fly on the first warm day of the year above 70F, but this year they held off for some reason. Hidden among the leaf litter is a P. imparis queen and a few males. This sums up what a pain it is to find ants among leaves (and tall grass).

They're so much easier to photograph when they land on your arm.

The males swarm around trees and wait for new queens to arrive. I like this because she actually made it up the tree to a considerable height. The swarms go all the way up the tree and usually queens get tackled by so many males they don't make it past 6' up.

 

As plants leaf out, aphids, leaf hoppers, and scales become active and provide food for ants. In this case a Lasius alienus worker. This is on a redbud tree and I notice aphids seem to only take hold right at the node where the leaf attaches to the stem.

Stealing nectar from flowers is the other option. In this case it's the Odorous House Ant, Tapinoma sessile, which I've found to be notorious for stealing nectar. I find them in more flowers than any other species, even in those with noted defenses that evolved to prevent ants from stealing from their flowers.  

Aphids make ants so much easier to photograph. Any food really that has the ants holding still. Here a Camponotus sp. tends some on our grape vine.

This year also marked the first time I Hosted/Attended the First Annual New Jersey Ant Together. We came across a Camponotus americanus colony which I don't encounter as much as the brighter colored Camponotus castaneus. So that was nice.

The Formica exsectoides mounds we encountered were awesome! The largest were two mounds next to each other that had to be 3' worth of mounded soil. Their mounds lined a pathway of considerable length all they way down at the Turkey Swamp Park here in NJ.

There were so many F. exsectoides workers pouring in and out of these mounds that you could actually hear the leaves rustling from them all rushing about.

Pheidole have always been a small mystery to me. Small ants in general always are. We have three species in New Jersey and they are all really tiny. This is a Pheidole bicarinata major worker. They're about three times as large as the workers which make them easier to identify of the three.

Pyramica is another rare ant almost never encountered. Seriously if you're not covered in chiggers, ticks, and poison ivy by the end then you're not looking hard enough typically. We found this colony under a rotten log that was near a creek and in a shady area. Apparently a problem with this species is they over heat easily in sunny spots so even dappled shade could be an issue for them. They're also predators of springtails so rotting plant matter is a must. I didn't expect to find an ant this cool after just 3 hours but there they were. I have occasionally found these in my yard.

Polyergus is another fun find. They're not "uncommon" but you don't find them everywhere. They're slave making ants of Formica species, which happen to make them very common all over the US and Canada. This was a first time encounter for me.

Amblyopone pallipes was another cool find, and a first for me. They're called Dracula Ants because they puncture their own developing brood in nonlethal ways to feed. Not a great photo at all compared to what's on the internet, but we held this thing for like 30 seconds before it crawled off and got lost in the pine brush.

This is a distorted angle but these are some of the specimens we collected while on the trip. 

The droughts of summer always limit ant activity but one thing I've always looked forward to is harvesting my Trillium seeds and presenting them to the ants. This year I got a lot more Camponotus castaneus workers at them than ever before. Nylanderia flavipes workers also showed up as they always do. You can really see the drastic difference in size between the two species.

I started work making my own key but never got around to finishing it. The project was going to be an interactive video on youtube where I'd have arrows and Annotation Boxes you could click on to take you elsewhere in the video. It's quite an undertaking and I'm not up to finishing it this year. Hopefully in the future something will come of it.

A Camponotus americanus worker on a Narrow Leaf Sunflower. Two of my most favorite things.

They were actually working tiny aphids but these weren't all that common on the plant. Despite the narrow leaves the aphids did a good job of hiding.

And the last ant photo I took this year that I'm really happy with is this Brachymyrmex queen and male, namely because of how tiny these ants are and how well this came out.