Alex WildA queen ant, Formica vinculans, after her mating flight. Illinois.
Ricós has moved@alexwild Hello, if I may ask: when you see an isolated winged ant and you don't know its species, is there a way to know, on the spot, if it's a queen or a male?
I do alright with the species I'm familiar with (I just observe them around, I'm not trained), but when I have nothing to compare them to, I can't be sure. Maybe there's an anatomical feature that could help? Anything that looks similar on males but not queens from a wide range of species?
And thanks for all your posts!
myrmepropagandist@enriquericos @alexwild If the head is small and the abdomen less girthy it’s probably a male. They have the smallest heads generally in any given species and look much like the queens otherwise but with much less junk in the trunk.
@futurebird @alexwild Curious, I usually get the feeling that an individual is a male or a queen but, after reading you, I realize that the features you mention are the exact ones I notice. I guess I developed an intuition over the years.
Still, this works as a good rule of thumb but it'd be nice to have a fool-proof way to be sure without having to become a Myrmecologist 😅
Thank you so much!
@enriquericos yeah, what @futurebird said.
Here’s a gallery of male ants:
https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Natural-History/Male-Ants/
@alexwild @enriquericos This gallery always makes me feel bad for the queens imagine you only get to go on one date in your whole life and he shows up like this 🫤
(more seriously one other thing I notice with males are their bigger eyes— they are made for flying and looking)
@futurebird @enriquericos Not as bad as this creepy dude, who just lurks around the nest trying to mate with queen pupae.
Ben S@alexwild @futurebird @enriquericos not as bad as the fig wasps where the boys don't even bother to emerge before opening their sisters pupa cases to mate with them. Very creepy. Sorry, no photos on that... Perhaps BBC life in the underbrush had the video?