Formica fusca is a long legged very dark brown, intelligent ant. It is very simple in its habits and doesn't keep aphids or group together to catch larger insects. It also never seems to wage war on other ants except ruginodis or Formica sanguinea in defence of its young.
Colonies can grow to as many as 1,000 in under three years and worker size increases to an average of about 6.5 mm (4mm to 7.5 mm overall) also after 3 years. They have alot of individual initiative and very few of the workers in a colony actually do anything - the vast majority appear to be bone idle and sit around apparently doing nothing. If any of the elite foraging group die then their place is taken by recruits from the ranks of the idle many which are actually repletes.
Usually one or few mature queens are present perminantly in a colony but they will overwinter young non-fertilized queens (and males sometimes) and these have been seen soliciting for mates in late spring. They are great opportunists and omnivorous in their diet. They milk the honeydew of aphids belonging to F. rufa, L. niger and even F. sanguinea if they can get away with it and they dont have a territorial range to defend. Since they dont have a territory to defend they dont bother with territorial guards, hence the large number of idle ants in a colony.
I have known queens of this species live for up to 20 years. I've observed workers lasting as long as 2 years. There could be problems with the economics of a fusca nest if idle workers are living longer and all the queens brood also survives - they are naturally timid and dont usually like to be crowded, hence you may have to move them to an aquarium if they do too well.
However, in Polyergus rufescens nests where fusca is a slave, the masters manage to host up to 20,000 fusca in the same place at the same time so apparently they can live in concentrated conditions under certain circumstances.
Tags: Formica | fusca | Keeping Ants | Morphology & Physiology
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