#camponotus

A common species in woodlands of the SW, active at day and night, and living in a single nest that may be in soil or in trees.

A common species in arid and semi-arid woodlands in southern Australia, where workers scurry swiftly with their gasters vertically raised. The holotype was collected at Gooseberry Hill here in Perth, but was probably destroyed during the bombing of Berlin during WWII.

ID by Dr Brian Heterick, who literally wrote the book on ants of Western Australia. This one is a minor worker.

Formerly Camponotus claripes var. inverallensis, and the same species as C. churchetti.

I'm a bit uncertain about the distribution - AntWiki only has sightings in South Australia, and iNaturalist a single record for WA - this one - and one in New South Wales. It's probably widespread in Southern Australia.

A large sugar ant endemic to coastal regions of Western Australia, from north of Cervantes to south of Busselton.

A widespread species across southern Australia, but I don't have much more information on them - Camponotus (Myrmosaulus) scutellus, which was described from Western Australia, is a synonym.

ant blogging the first nantics have finally arrived!! There should be 1 more on the way. I’m sooooo happy wtf now my big lady doesn’t have to do all this on her own. You can see two of the nantics in the pictures lugging around eggs and such and trying to get them organized. You can also see on the left side their neat little trash pile where the old cocoons went.

The video is of them munching on their first meal of honey, they all jumped on it so fast I was low-key worried they’d get stuck. I think our queen had a wanted a taste then got her antennae sticky and decided to bail. She came back later and had some though, but thats in a separate video. I have mealworms on the way to feed them for a protein source which I’ll post too!

weekly 3AM ant blogging:

You can see some of the cocoons have darkened; the first workers should be arriving very soon now! Maybe even next week, which means I’ll have to transition to feeding the colony. I’m still sourcing feeder insects, and not sure how exactly I’d like to go about it. I’d like to also next year raise feeder insects for the colony but currently thats a little excessive given the size. They prob won’t be moved out of the test tube until mid-late summer next year.

ant update……….

things are going well with ant, I check on her once a week so as not to stress her. I keep her test tube in a dark, warm chest tucked away on a bookshelf so as to avoid disturbing her. She currently has 4 cocoons which should hatch as worker ants around the end of this month. There’s also ~ 3-5 eggs underneath the cocoons which will probably hatch around mid to late October I’d guess. So a bit before they’re set to hibernate. It’s hard to tell how many and if they’re all in the same stage of development because I don’t want to move the test tube and aggravate her. She’s a bit high strung, and starts to move the cocoons and eggs around as soon as she feels too much vibration or exposed to too much light.