Hybrid Ant

Remember this article is always updating and changing. So whatever you read now you can check back later, preferably few days later, for more updates.

boldDay 1: Today is not actually day 1. I've had this hybrid amt for a while but I just decided to start this journal today. The workers are still trying to break out of their cotton, I don't know what is taking them so long. When they are determined to dig, they dig fast. They should be out after school. The queen ant doesn't seem to be taking care of any brood, I think she is waiting for the workers to break out. But then what happened to the last larvae? Anyways I can't make out how the workers look like but if I'm correct about the combination of species this ant is, the worker should have an abnormally big head. Right now I think the species combination of this ant is phiedole morrisii, phiedole obtusospinosa, labidus coecus, and camponotus pennscylvanius. It sounds crazy to me, ants of completely different sub-families, let alone genera, should not be able to breed together. But I found some evidence suggesting my hybrid idea ranging from the petiole to the fact that the first batch of workers became pupae about as long as the width of an average 4mm pencil which are now hatched and should be around 8 mm long, about the size of a phiedole obtusospinosa supermajor.

The ants have not broken out. They just started pushing another random place. I think it's time I help.

Day 5: I have been really busy. The ants just won't come out even though I made a wide open hole for them to exit. I think I will have to move them into that new nest I'm getting because they are going to die if I leave them their.

Day 8: The queen with workers died and I do not know where the workers have gone. I only have two healthy queen of this hybrid left so I'm focusing full attention on them. I also got two more queens of this hybrid luckily but both are weak. I quickly placed them on sugar water cottons so they drink up and become strong again. I'm going to remove them from the cotton now so they don't get too sticky.

I just checked on them and one of the queens from the pool died but the other one recovered and is walking around her half bottle. I kept the body of the dead queen to observe her closer. I also started a kind of test to see whether the queens will accept each other. Last time when I did it with a different queen of the same hybrid, they never became aggressive but the pool queen died because she was weak. Now I just have to wait for the workers to come after the queens meet. This is the true test because I found out that fire ant queens will accept each other at first btu the workers won't and kill till there is one queen remaining. So if the workers for these ants kill one of these queens, that'll probably mean they are just fire ants. I also noticed that these ants have legs that can grip onto almost anything very well so even when they die they almost always have at least one leg gripping the walls holding the body up. But what I don't understand is that even though they can grip onto almost anything including plastic, sometimes they can walk around the plastic walls but sometimes they start having difficulty and keep slowly sliding down the plastic even when nothing has changed in the plastic. In fact just now one of the queens had one of her legs stuck on the plastic wall and once she freed it she started slowly sliding down the plastic walls but she has always been able to grip the plastic well.