How long have you studied Ants? in Anting/Field Observations/Sightings Forum

How long have you studied Ants?

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Unregistered(d)	How long have you studied Ants?		Lead	[-]
Posts: 0 12/21/2000 9:33 PM	I'd love to know about ow mayn years of experiencer people around here have had with ants, and the colonies people have. Someone else was doing this a while ago and I forgot some of the info. My name is Chris Reed, I am 16, i have had 11 years of "experience" with ants, mainly just me raising them the first part when I was young. I plan to become a myrmecologist. I currently have: 1 Pogonomyrmex Salinus 1 P. Barbatus 1 P. Occidentalis 1. P. Californicus 1. P. Desertorum 1. P. Maricopa 2. P. Badius 1. P. Rugosus 4. Camponotus Castaneus 1. C. Americanus 1. Formica of unknown spp. 1. Myrmica Rubra 1. Solenopsis Invicta 3. Pheidole Dentata 1. Fungus grower of unknown spp. 1. Camponotus Pennsylvanicus If anyone cares I keep them in a shelving system in my garage. Dedicated entirely to ants. Except for my harvesters which require warmer climes, so they are kept indoors on my desk. I'd love to know where and how other setups and colonies are mantained. Please tell names (If you want) and I am really interested in how old some of you are. .....that sounds ..kinda weird, but I am just curious how many of you are adults. Thanks, Chris [edit title....ZA]
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Unregistered(d)	experience	#1	[url]	[-]
Posts: 0 12/21/2000 9:59 PM	I'm 12 and I have red harvesters which is all I have ever been able to buy or find exept for the fire ants
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antdude	Wow! My history with ants...	#2	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 12/22/2000 12:24 AM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	You guys are young! Chris, I guess you were addicted to ants since you were five years old? Sheesh! . I think I got addicted to ants when I was in fourth grade (1985/1986) after reading some ant books from a few library. I was about 9 or 10 years old! However, I used to like other bugs and insects before that. Everyday before college, I used to watch my Argentine ants in Uncle Milton's Ant Farms (haha I sealed the cracks and holes with tapes and glues -- well I didn't have resources, ok?). I managed to have a good colony for a bit with like 50 queen ants! Then later on, I used a regular plant pot for them to nest. It was an island type so they had difficult escaping. Yeah, I couldn't see their queen very well. I also used a tennis plastic clear can with a soda can with dirt to make a circular Ant Farm. That worked too. All the Ant Farms were kept in the garage (a very bad environment for them but parents refused to let them in the house). However, these Argentine ants always found a way to sneak outside. Argh! It was funny how I wanted to be an entomologist, but computer science took me away :P. I almost went to U.C. Riverside (California) for an entomology degree! Hey, at least I rocked on the insect test in high school's biology (had to do an insect collection -- heh! I did get to visit UCR's entomology department and meet some professors. Too bad, no live ants. Only dead ants in their insect collections. During the high school days, I got to meet Robert H. Crandall. He was basically my entomology mentor, and was cool! Now, Robert had an ant colony (during high school days). He gave me an unmated queen one time (it was already too late for her to mate, and she died a month later [sniffs]) /\___/\ Ant (AntDude -- Your Host) from The Ant Farm's Message Board. / /\ /\ \\| \|. .\| \| \ _ / The Ant Farm ( ) http://antfarm.home.dhs.org
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antdude		#3	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 09/19/2010 8:36 AM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	Bumped to be read and get new replies. Quote of the Week: "May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown. Ant(Dude) @ The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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Doctorant		#4	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3859 09/19/2010 4:57 PM Doc. and Soldier Ant	I became interested in ants at about age 5 also -- That was in the year 1957 or 1958! I've never tired of them since. My first memorable observations were a flight of Lasius neoniger in Buffalo NY, on a late summer day when I was 6, and encountering Camponotus vicinus under a board in Taos NM, the following summer. Now that was quite a sight for a rather small-statured 6-year-old! I was most interested to read once that myrmecologist Bert Hoelldobler also had a similar experience with Camponotus ligniperdus as a small child. The charm of the Camponotus!
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Myrmecos2		#5	[url]	[-]
Major Worker Ant Posts: 305 09/19/2010 5:45 PM Doc.	That's funny. My first ant memory- also at age 5 or 6- was Camponotus pennsylvanicus.
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Bentley		#6	[url]	[-]
Minor Worker Ant Posts: 169 09/19/2010 5:46 PM	Solenopsis Invicta live all over the US? I recently caught 30 or so S. Molesta queens in Nebraska, S. Invicta would be awesome to have
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antdude		#7	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 09/19/2010 7:17 PM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	Wow, I started so late in my life for ants. However, I did love nature at that age since I had fish, pillbugs, snails, etc. Quote of the Week: "May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown. Ant(Dude) @ The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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Aka ArtAnt		#8	[url]	[-]
Loyal Worker Ant Posts: 957 09/19/2010 9:28 PM	My fascination started at a young age. I've been keeping ants for 8-9 years and my addiction hasn't changed. I started with Uncle Milton's Ant Farms and gradually became more ambitious. I have kept a wide range of species in the genera Lasius, Formica, Camponotus, Crematogaster, Aphaenogaster, Myrmica, Ponera and others but Camponotus is my favorite genus. Camponotus americanus http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/10258/Aka-s-Camponotus-americanus-large-photographs-photos?page=1 Campontus chromaides http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/10286/Aka-s-Camponotus-chromaiodes-big-photographs-photos?page=1 Mumble info. mumble.sourceforge.net/ 216.246.49.178 port 64742 username (yours) PW rainbow download 1.2.3 (Stable) for windows and it should have instructions for setup. Edited 1 time by Aka ArtAnt 09/19/2010 9:31 PM.
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antdude		#9	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 09/19/2010 10:50 PM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	Aka ArtAnt wrote: My fascination started at a young age. I've been keeping ants for 8-9 years and my addiction hasn't changed. I started with Uncle Milton's Ant Farms and gradually became more ambitious... That sounds like my ant life. I started out with Uncle Milton's Ant Farms. I was a total newbie. I had no Internet to talk about ants like you, lucky younglings. Quote of the Week: "May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown. Ant(Dude) @ The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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PHiL		#10	[url]	[-]
Major Worker Ant Posts: 315 09/20/2010 5:02 AM	Since I was a young child I'm interested in nature. I loved snacks, bugs, bees, snakes... Especially I liked insects and spiders. My first insect-pets were crickets when I was 10 years old. But my rela "specialisation" to insects began when I was 14, I started reading everything about them in books and wikipedia, printed out artciles, started to learn latin technical terms. My parents though I'm crazy, because I was learning names like "Archaeognatha" like my English vocab. When I was 16, two years ago, there was a special meeting: I watched the giant Messor wasmanni colony's in Croatia, and since this day there's nearly nothing else in my mind then ants. I started to meet other ant-friends, learned and learned, and I'm still learning new things about ants. I've kept so many ant species, impossible to list them here. But my first ants were Lasius niger and Myrmica rubra. I'm also going to study biology and hopefully ants, when I'm finished with school. At the moment I'm very interested in arboricol ants. Greetings, Phil P.S.: I'm 18 years old. my blog
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antdude		#11	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 09/20/2010 5:38 AM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	PHiL wrote: P.S.: I'm 18 years old. Wow! I thought you were way older than that! Quote of the Week: "May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown. Ant(Dude) @ The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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Ryan349		#12	[url]	[-]
Henchant Posts: 1442 09/20/2010 12:55 PM	Same... I have kept ants for two years and love them to bits but have to control my love for them and hide them in cupboards when my girlfriend and mates come over... :/
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PHiL		#13	[url]	[-]
Major Worker Ant Posts: 315 09/20/2010 1:03 PM	I don't hide them (actually I think it wouldn't be possible to hide my currently 22 ant species), maybe that's the big problem - I don't have a girlfriend, and never had before @antdude: I'm interpreting this as a compliment, thanks. my blog
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Ryan349		#14	[url]	[-]
Henchant Posts: 1442 09/20/2010 1:05 PM	Nahh your a nice guy. I am a bit of a fake but it's just a part of me I keep to my self (sort of like a breath of fresh air.)
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antdude		#15	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 09/20/2010 2:48 PM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	Ryan349 wrote: Nahh your a nice guy. I am a bit of a fake but it's just a part of me I keep to my self (sort of like a breath of fresh air.) Your what? What fake yourself? Quote of the Week: "May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown. Ant(Dude) @ The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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Doctorant		#16	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3859 09/20/2010 2:57 PM Doc. and Soldier Ant	Hi PHiL, Some ant-loving, or at least ant-tolerating girl will come along one day, I'm sure. By the way, we say arboreal when referring to tree-dwelling ants. Edited 1 time by Doctorant 09/21/2010 3:03 PM.
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antdude		#17	[url]	[-]
Posts: 31537 09/21/2010 3:38 PM Borg Ant, Your Forum Overlord & Basic English Cop/Enforcer/Police.	Doctorant wrote: You, AntDude, will have to wait for someone who will tolerate having her spelling corrected. Quote of the Week: "May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown. Ant(Dude) @ The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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Ant Overlord		#18	[url]	[-]
Minor Worker Ant Posts: 118 08/13/2011 6:50 PM	I am 14 years old right now. However, my interest in ants came and went over the course of 4-5 years, and I started collecting queens and starting colonies at around age 12.
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Jason		#19	[url]	[-]
Loyal Worker Ant Posts: 662 08/13/2011 11:13 PM	I'm 18 years old, and have been an insect hobbyist since 3rd grade, so I'm rather late. I became first interested in ants only in late 2008, when I followed LiveScience's gallery of Alex Wild's ant photographs to the source and became enthralled by his documentation of ant biology. So compared to others my age who have pursued ants as a hobby for decades, I'm practically callow. I've been lucky to have had friends and teachers who not only tolerated but encouraged my interests, especially in high school. My parents always like to complain that keeping things with six legs or more was a childish activity, a distraction from getting good grades, and the way to being rejected by top-tier colleges, but they tolerate it anyways. PHiL, being single has so many more benefits than you may realize. It may be because I'm emotionally more detached, but I really don't see much to extra (and often awkward) social events and emotional roller coasters. A lot of 18 year olds have never had experience with relationships, so it's not a bad thing to have never had a girlfriend before. My first memory of ant was when I was in kindergarten, and a small ant was walking slowly through the carpet in front of me at reading time. I can still see it clearly enough to ID it as Tetramorium. I also remember squishing Formica fusca-group ants on my friend's driveway in Wisconsin, and even capturing a dealate carpenter ant queen and releasing it after it laid an egg. My first ant sting was from a Pogonomyrmex on a vacation in Colorado; I was quite surprised to find an ant that fought back after being seized. Edited 1 time by Jason 08/14/2011 7:37 AM.
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ANTdrew		#20	[url]	[-]
Young Worker Ant Posts: 64 08/14/2011 11:43 AM	2 years. @Phil, find a girl who has the same interests as you! The extraordinary character of these creatures will appear in its proper light if we undertake to compare them on the one hand with the remaining social insects, and on the other hand with man, the paragon of social animals. -W.M. Wheeler
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How long have you studied Ants?

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