Pheidole sinica
Pheidole sinica Queen
INTRODUCTION / SUBFAMILY / GENUS
Welcome to a new ant post about a species I have been long wanting to keep, but never really decided to buy, for whatever reason.
This species belongs to the Myrmicinae family and the Pheidole genus.
Described from soldiers and workers taken by Mr. Yin Shicai at Jianghua Seed Garden of China in 7 June 1978 and at the Mangshan Forestry Centre, Hunan province in 22 June 1979, the species was only later described and named as Ceratopheidole sinica, by Wu, J.; Wang, C. 1992c. Hymenoptera: Formicidae. [In Chinese.]. Pp. 1301-1320 in: Peng, J.; Liu, Y. (eds.) 1992. Iconography of forest insects in Hunan, China. Hunan: Hunan Scientific and Technical Publishing House, 1473 pp. (PDF)
Later in 1995 by Bolton, Ceratopheidole became synonymized with Pheidole, and Ceratopheidole sinica became Pheidole sinica.
Pheidole sinica Queen
COMMON NAME
“Sinica” means “China” in old Greek, which matches its Chinese common name 中华大头蚁 (Zhōnghuá dàtóuyi) - China Big Headed Ant.
Pheidole (read as fidole), comes from Greek and it refers to being thrifty, which is something growing strong and healthy.
DISTRIBUTION
This species can only be found in China, more specifically in the provinces of Yunnan, Hunan and Henan, as shown in the map above
CASTES and MORPHOLOGY
This ant species belongs to the Myrmicinae subfamily and the Pheidole genus as mentioned before. As usual in all Pheidole species, they have 4 castes, queens, males and a dimorphic caste of workers, the majors also called soldiers and the minors. Their overall coloration is reddish brown to dark brown
Queens: Size: 14mm | Soldier: 8.2 - 9.1mm | workers: Size: 4.6 - 4.7mm
This is the largest Pheidole species in the world!
DIVISION OF LABOR
Since this species is exclusively dimorphic with absence of intermediate castes, their labor division is very straightforward. minor workers typically do most of the foraging and majors primarily remain inside the nest caring for colony defense, food storage, seed milling, just like any other normal dimorphic Pheidole species.
REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGY
New colonies of Pheidole sinica are founded by single or multiple queens claustrally. They are capable of pleometrosis - which is a behavior observed in social insects where colony formation is initiated by multiple queens, however they are strictly monogyne, which means that after a successful foundation period, there will be fight for dominance between the queens.
NEST AND COLONY COMPOSITION
Pheidole sinica Queen
Pheidole sinica prefers undisturbed habitats such as primary and secondary forests, showing less capacity of adaptation to disturbed environments like other Pheidole species, such as Pheidole megacephala, etc.
They prefer to nest in the soil or under stones and logs. They are known for being polydomous, which means they will have several satellite nests to support their needs.
FORAGING AND FEEDING
Pheidole sinica have many similarities with Carebara species, especially regarding their foraging techniques of mass recruitment and agressiveness. Like Carebara, they also form huge trails, which interconnect with most of their satellite nests in order to more effectively recruit the largest amount of possible of workers in the shorter time possible such that they can monopolize all the available resources in those areas.
Pheidole sinica Worker
They are absolutely generalist ant species, taking everything from insects, to seeds and feeding on sugary secretions from extra-floral nectaries and other arthropods (such as aphids).
DIAPAUSE
Given their distribution range, it is guarantied that they are heterodynamic, but to know if they possibly quasi-heterodynamic or not, I cannot tell. Although other keepers have successfully skipped diapause with this species before, it is still highly recommended to give them a dormancy period by lowering the temperature. This would best replicate their natural habitat conditions from the provinces in which they are found.
Pheidole sinica Worker
CONCLUSION
The world's largest Big Headed Ant, Pheidole sinica is my latest ant keeping colony adventure!
Of course I don’t have yet any experience with them to report anything substantial to you guys at this moment, but will definitely update you all as time goes by.
Thank you for passing by and taking the time to read, I hope you have enjoyed it, and see you on the next post!
Cheers!