Slim Carpenter Ants - Camponotus nicobarensis | Ant Keeping Season Week 7
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Hi Beautiful Ant People! Welcome to this week's video, where I bring you some insights and questions about one of the most wanted Camponotus species. This is a species which is very sought after on the exotic ant keeping market, especially as a beginner keeper first exotic species! So hope you enjoy watching the video, let me know what you think, if you agree with the theory and what is your take on it.
Homodynamic - a continuous all-year round development of the colony without the obligatory periods of dormancy.
Homodynamic species often have a certain seasonal structure of the annual cycle, on a general background of continuous development. It is well known that typically tropical insects cannot survive for a long time at temperatures well below the optimum and, especially, below the developmental threshold, therefore, it can be argued that the tropical ants in their majority are not adapted to survive during the cold periods of the year. However, some ant species can demonstrate continuous all-year round development even in subtropical environments.
Heterodynamic - An annual developmental cycle of ant colonies, in which a diapause arises naturally.
They have a distinct seasonal structure, the period of diapause is regularly replaced by the period of development, after which a new period of diapause occurs, and so on. It is characterized by a lack of larval development and of queen oviposition and the presence in the nests of only certain brood categories.
Quasi-heterodynamic - Tropical species, adapted to live in regions with cold winters without forming real diapause, they are characterized by the potential for unlimitedly long development under favorable conditions inherent in homodynamic species.
As an example, several scientists have shown that in southern United States, the invasive fire ant species remain essentially homodynamic: eggs, larvae and pupae of workers are present in their nests all-year round. However, the number of brood stages varies considerably during the year, and in winter, it is very small, as the development of the brood ceases at temperature below the developmental threshold and so, the ants spend the winter in a cold coma state suffering from more or less strong mortality, but in general the colonies overwinter successfully.
And this is the main question with Camponotus nicobarensis, how are they classified under these terms?
So are they a homodynamic species or a heterodynamic species?
Normally Camponotus are known to be heterodynamic, and to make things a little bit more complicated, heterodynamic species are divided into two groups.
The exogenous-heterodynamic characterized by the possibility of continuous and unlimited development under optimal conditions. The diapause is optional and occurs only when the temperature is lowered. At temperatures above 25°C, as well as at diurnal thermal periods 20/30°C, they all behave like true homodynamic species.
And the endogenous-heterodynamic where the diapause arises due to internal factors (internal biological clock) and no external conditions can prevent it.
I personally believe that Camponotus nicobarensis falls into the heterodynamic category and the exogenous group. Of course this is simply my assumption, and I hope that you all can chip in with your own experiences and conclusions on this topic down on the comment section.
I would recommend you also check out my website right now, where I am running two journals at the moment, one for Oecophylla smaragdina and the other one for these Tropical Fire Ant Queens/Colonies. They are updated every Friday.
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Hope you enjoy the video!! Let me know in the comment section what you think, and if you have any questions, which I answer all !
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