I used to live in an area of Kent called the isle of Thanet (Ramsgate to be exact) and there was a good diversity of ants and most were plentiful.
The full species list that I came across in those days was as follows:
- Formica fusca,
- Formica cunnicularia
- Formica glebarae
- Lasius umbratus (mixtus)
- Lasius niger
- Lasius alienus
- Lasius fuliginosus,
- Tetramorium caespitum
- Myrmica scabrinodis
- Myrmica rubra
- Myrmica ruginodis
- Myrmicina graminicola
- Ponera coactata
- Lepthothorax sp.
Some of these were native to my parents garden and the rest were resident because I had transplanted them. In addition, Formica rufa was close by (Canterbury district) and I managed to maintain small nests of this species in the garden most of the time. I went overboard on one occassion and ended getting alot more F. rufa, no sooner were they in the aquarium, that they rushed out onto the lawn, and started battling with everything.
I managed to recapture most of the horde. I made sac with a draw string at the neck out of curtain material and, I shovelled all the ants from the aquarium into it, before getting on my bike and taking them to a place I thought they'd be safe. This happened to be on the boundary of Ramsgate airport (Pysons road) before it was built over and in those days it was a prime spot for catching ants.
If any of you live in the Ramsgate area then prime spots for anting were the disused Southeastern and Chatham railway cutting (very large area), the Ramsgate side of the Pegwell Bay Cliffs area, and the Manston bridge area (backway to manston aerodrome from Ramsgate). There also used to be a record of Formica rufa from Kingsgate on Thanet but I searched every square yard of the area for this species and didn't find any trace of it. Interestingly, I had transplanted a large cunnicularia nest with about 20 queens into my Dads garden one year and, since relatives still live there, I still keep in touch with my lost charges. The cunnicularia nest exists to this day and seems as large as it used to be. By my reckoning that puts it over forty years old and must've survived by readopting a succession of new queens.
Tags: England | Kent | Keeping Ants
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