The ANTicipation is killing me!
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Gosh these punās really BUG me.
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Here are the real photos:
These ants move quite quickly, but I will add in more high quality photos plus a description probably tomorrow. Photos will have to wait. But I did add a description.
The Usurper Cone Ant
These are Dorymyrmex medeis the usurper cone ant, which is a temporary social parasite. A queen enters the nest of a nearby cone ant colony, then kills the resident queen, she then begins laying eggs that will hatch into D. medeis workers, eventually the entire colony will be made up of the usurper cone ant. Another cool feature is that once a queen has entered into a colony, the usurper cone ant will connect the mixed colony into a series of āusurpedā nests creating a large array of satellite nests with multiple queens.
This colony that I dug up appears to be made up of 2 temporary social parasites. I found 3 different species of alate (that is winged reproductive ants), the bottom photo, in the center has a dark male D. medeis , the middle photo has a unidentified (but probably the original host species) unmated queen. The top image has a pupae of this red alate. the The dark ants are clearly D. medeis but some of them have a reddish head and thorax, which is a trait found in Dorymyrmex reginicula which has very small queen that I did see in colony collection, but didnāt find in the lab.
So this colony was originally one species, then one social parasite moved in, then another social parasite moved itā¦ Aint nature grand?
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Dude, you tell me to provide better quality than this for you to recognize the species
and give us pics of your new ants looking like
I feel a bit like you are ridiculing me 
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I think he plans to do updatesā¦ patience, my friendā¦
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he never said better-quality photos dude, he just needed a different perspective in order to be able to identify them
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BOOOORING
I know, I read his msg, but those pics will better be top notch
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And you just killed my fun 
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bet chrono is gon tell me I post too much any second, anyway
@hivefleetbothan could you maybe take some pics of the whole setup, not just the ultra close up? Iād like to see the whole āhabitatā they have at your lab/place/crack kitchen 
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#Sad!
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Sure but be prepared to be disappointed!
Unfortunately, the test tubes they live in really makes it tricky to get a high quality photo of an individual ant, so I will probably sacrifice one to get a microscope photo of it.
P.S
I will go right ahead and blame the photo low quality on the test tubesā¦ They reflect a great deal of light so the flash is right out, plus at 8x magnification the huge amount of movement in the ant nest leads to a great deal of blurring.
P.S.S.
To address the issue of identifying antsā¦ Depending on the ant there are different important pieces of information that are required to get a positive ID. However, in general a āsidewaysā view as well as a photo of the ants face is typically enough.
This is an example of how to tell 2 different species apart. See if you can spot the difference just from the illustration.
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Donāt use flash, donāt magnify digitally and just leave the zooming to usā¦and hey, you could make it a small video/gif to avoid the issue wt their movement 
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A big raccoon came by a friendās house where we were visiting last nightā¦ It just sat there and ate the whole bowl of cat food before leavingā¦
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I donāt use the flash at all with ants (it really throws off their colors).
If I knew how to turn it into a small gif I would.
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Take a video and either use one of the various vid to gif converters online or get an app for your phone (esp. handy if you use it to record the vid in the first place ofc).
Otherwise am quite sure @delenn13 has some free software for that on her hands.
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Your wish is my commandā¦
https://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-animated-gif-maker.htm
I swear by Giz. So you should be able to find something here.
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okay, here, as requested is a photo of:
My roomā¦ a nice little climate controlled space.
The Housing tray, the white residue on the sides is dried fluon (a liquid Teflon lubricant) which I apply in order to prevent ants from crawling out of the trays.
These are Pheidole obscurothorax ants, crowding around a food test tube. The ones with wings are alates (unmated queens).
This is a hopefully clearer shot of the Dorymyrmex ants, unfortunately I canāt get a good shoot of the brood right now, so most of the alates are not visible in the photos.
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They look vicious, with their big sharp pointy teethā¦
Now if only they were white and fluffy!
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Actually, they are pretty chillā¦ Content to just sit there are keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Even when they are in āfull attack modeā they donāt hurt at all (although they have quite a grip).
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