Alright, and now for the not so good news, guys.
I mentioned that I caught something crazy on camera while filming this episode!
Have a look at this ant here!
Do you notice something peculiar about it?
There, under its head!
When I saw it, my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach!
Oh no!
A mite!
A huge one, and one unlike any other I’ve ever seen before!
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I can’t believe it, guys!
The mite is super creepy and most of all just huge!
I’ve never seen an ant mite like this before.
It kind of reminded me of a massive deer tick or something!
So, turns out, after observing this thing for a week, I’ve learned a few things about
it, and was able to get some expert info about this mystery creature clinging on to our ants,
from an actual acarologist, i.e. someone who studies mites for a living!
I’ll go over everything I know in this video, and then will be asking for your helpful opinions
as to what we should do next, so please hear me out and stay tuned for all of that.
Alright, so before I go into what I’ve learned about this mite, let me go over the three
possibilities as to what it could be:
First possibility, is the worst case scenario, which is that this mite is indeed a parasite,
that sucks the blood of our ants, which means it is a danger to our new, young carpenter
ant colony, which you guys have officially named the Woodland Warriors.
We’ve seen on this channel in the past how devastating blood-sucking, parasitic mites
could be, as it wiped out my once thriving yellow crazy ant colony, the Golden Empire,
which used to number in the millions, but after the mites gained a foothold, had no
chance of recovery, and I had to totally start the colony over again.
It was also suspected by some of you, that my late OG fire ant colony, the Fire Nation,
was also wiped out by blood-sucking parasitic mites, as one was spotted on a surviving worker.
You guys even spotted blood-sucking ant mites on some of the wild ants living in Antopia,
my backyard, which you can see here on this black crazy ant.
Overall it seems parasitic, blood-sucking mites tend to be a common pandemic in the
ant world, and an agonizing nightmare to deal with if you’re an ant colony.
The second possibility is perhaps this mite is a friend and its relationship to the ants
is a mutualistic one.
If you’ve been following this channel for awhile, you’ll know that periodically we
will spot mites on our ants that fall under the category of “phoretic mites”, essentially
mites that proceed to a certain life stage where they attach to the bodies of ants, the
moment environmental conditions become unfavourable for the mites, like when it gets too dry,
too wet, too hot, too cold, or there’s a shortage of food, for instance.
These non-dangerous phoretic mites don’t feed on the blood of the ants, but instead
normally eat fungus or decaying material that results from the waste the ants produce.
In this way, these mites are biological friends to the ants, and are actually beneficial to
them because they help with clean up, and only use the ants to hitch a ride once their
environment becomes unfavourable, with the hopes that the ants will move to a place that
is more favourable for the mites, at which point the phoretic mites proceed to the next
life stage where they detach from the ants and go on living their normal lives eating
the ants’ waste as usual.
In fact, these phoretic mites are such a non-danger, they don’t even have mouthparts of anuses
at this phoretic lifestage when they’re attached to the ants’ bodies.
While on the ants, they’re in sort of this non-feeding dormant mode, to self-preserve
until the ants take them to greener pastures.
In fact, remember a few weeks ago I freaked out when I saw mites on our Golden Empire?
I had feared the blood-sucking mites had returned!
But, turns out, AC Family, I’m happy to let you know that the mites were phoretic.
The yellow crazy ants no longer have them, and my guess is the mites all detached from
our ants as soon as it started to rain more when I live, and humidity levels in the ant
room rose.
So going back to this mite on members of the Woodland Warriors, maybe this mite, though
huge and scary, is actually a friendly mite.
I don’t think it would be considered phoretic though, because it totally looks active and
non-dormant.
So gross when it moves, by the way.
Makes me really itchy!
But my suspicion is, it could be the adult form of the small garbage-eating mites, we
spotted crawling around in their garbage pile in last week’s episode, in which case its
presence would actually be beneficial to our ants.
The third possibility is that this mite has what is called a commensalistic relationship
with the ants, which essentially means it’s mooching off the ants and its presence neither
benefits the ants in any way, nor harms them.
For instance, one possibility is that this mite could just be using the ants for protection,
shelter, transportation, or simply as their permanent mobile homes, and doesn’t necessarily
feed on things that harm the ants.
In this case, the mite is a moocher and commensalistic!
So with all that in mind, I’ve been keeping an eye on this mystery giant mite over the
past week, and have made a few interesting observations.
Check this out, guys!
First, I noticed that I don’t find the mites anywhere else on the ants’ bodies, except
for the bottom of the ants’ faces.
AC Family, it seems these mites are literal face-huggers!
Let’s call them that for now.
The facehuggers seem very adept at clinging on to the bottom of the ants’ heads, upside
down, and prefer to face inward towards the ants’ gaster end.
Another thing which I’m unsure about is how many facehugger mites there actually are!
Sometimes I sense that there is only this one huge facehugger in the colony, because
I don’t recall ever seeing two ants with a facehugger at the same time.
At other times, however, I suspect there are more than one facehugger in the colony.
I do know for a fact that the mite or mites move from ant to ant, because I once saw it
on our one male ant, who as you can see doesn’t seem to have it here in this shot.
My guess is it hops from ant to ant when the ants feed mouth-to-mouth via trophallaxis.
If this is the case, it would make sense that this mite specializes on ants as their host,
and it wouldn’t even surprise me that the biological mite-ant relationship, be it mutualism,
commensalism, or parasitism, went as far as this facehugger species only being found in
the nests of this species of carpenter ant, as there are many cases in the ant world where
ants have formed exclusive symbiotic relationships like that, like our Golden Empire and their
cute ant crickets, a specialized species of cricket found only in yellow crazy ant nests
and nowhere else in the wild.
Overall, I had so many questions in my head, so I went into my network of insect friends,
and contacted an acarologist friend of mine, a biologist who studies mites for a living
named Dr. Kaitlyn Campbell from the University of North Carolina.
She was actually the one who taught us about phoretic mites.
If anyone would know about this mystery facehugger mite, it would be her!
I wrote:
“Hi Dr. Kaitlin,
It's been a few years since we last chatted.
We at the AntsCanada Youtube channel were mind-blown by the concept of mite phoresis,
which you taught us a few years ago.
We now know not to panic right away when we spot mites on our ants.
Thank you for that!
However, yet again I've spotted a large mystery mite or tick (?) that clings to the bottom
of my carpenter ants’ heads.
I was wondering if you could take a look at our video and let me know if you think we
should be worried, or if they are somehow helpful to the colony.
They're quite large but don't look like the typical blood-sucking mites.”
I linked last week’s episode and hoped she would bring good news.
And AC Family, to my delight, she responded back and this was her surprising response:
“Hi Mikey
Thanks for your email and the cool video!
The specimen on your Camponotus ant is definitely a mite and is in the large group called Mesostigmata.
Without seeing a specimen it is very hard for me to be able to tell what it is unfortunately
(a lot of the characteristics that help me ID them are on the underside).
I have copied Ron Ochoa on here since he is also very interested in ant mites.
My guess is that it is some sort of Laelapid, maybe Myrmozercon?
Some of these can be harmful for the ants.
If you are able to send a sample I could diagnose it with more certainty for you!
Best wishes, Kaitlin”
Sweet!
This was all interesting to know, plus awesome that we were connected to another acarologist
who was into ant mites to help us solve the case!
Dr. Ron, who happens to be from an entirely different state, Maryland, working for the
USDA, also emailed back saying…
“Dear Mikey,
I do agree with Dr. Campbell.
If you can send the mite to her or me, we will be able to study it.
Hope you could collect several.”
And so there you have it, guys.
I needed to send them specimens of the mite, as they weren’t able to ID the exact species
of our facehugger or facehuggers, based on just what they could gather from our video.
Mite identification, it seems, is just as involved and complex as identifying ant species.
But now here’s the thing.
If these facehuggers are indeed beneficial to our ant colony, I fear removing this one
mite could be detrimental to the colony if it does help the carpenter ants survive in
some way, i.e. by eating up harmful mold from the nest, or if there’s an even deeper co-dependence
going on that we don’t know about, say for instance, the mites feed on harmful wood molds
attacking the ants’ bodies.
In fact, on this note: I don’t even know how the mite got here in the first place,
seeing as this entire colony was raised in an enclosed test tube the whole time, from
just our single pregnant queen ant.
Could it be that the mite was attached to our queen before the colony was even born,
since before she even left her birth nest to embark on her nuptial flight to mate?
Could our carpenter ants and this mite, be involved together in one very tight and long
standing symbiosis?
Could this be a symbiosis ant and mite biologists don’t even know about yet?
We’ve been making a few novel ant discoveries on this channel lately, as I gather things
such as this are largely unstudied.
Perhaps a stretch, but I’m not about to rule out the possibility that removing this
mite, which does seem to be super specialized for life with the ants, could actually have
a reverse effect and negative impact on the ants.
So my second dilemma is: I wonder if I should wait until I spot more of these facehuggers
before I collect them for sending off to our mite experts in the US, just in case they
are beneficial mites.
Now, Dr. Caitlin mentioned that a lot of the characteristics that help ID the mite are
on the underside of the mite.
I wonder if I could simply isolate the mite and film it from below with my 4K macro camera,
and hopefully get a video image clear enough for Dr. Kaitlin and/or Dr. Ron to get a species
identification.
Then, I could simply release the unharmed mite back into the ant colony afterward.
If I send the mite all the way to the US, it’s surely not coming back and would need
to be drowned in alcohol.
Finally, the third problem is: how on Earth do I even collect these facehuggers?
The easiest way in my mind is to actually fish out the ant or ants with the mites already
attached to them, and simply send both the ants with the mites together to Drs Caitlin
and Ron.
It might even be useful to them to have a knowledge about the host ant, as well, but
the main problem with that is removing worker ants from the colony this early in the game
could be detrimental to our Woodland Warriors, as they’re still a young colony, and at
this stage of their development, every worker counts, because there is lots of work to be
done, babies to care for, mouths to feed, etc.
So now, AC Family here’s where I need your help.
What do you think we should do?
Do we wait and observe the mite before taking any course of action?
Perhaps see if we spot more of them over time or if the ants start dying off?
My fear is if we wait too long, though, is it might be too late and our Woodland Warriors
could be harmed by a growing population of what were lethal parasitic mites all along.
AC Family, our Woodland Warriors need your help.
In the past, you guys have always been such a vital source of help for the ant colonies
we love and care for together on this channel.
I am hopeful we can put our minds together and solve this facehugger mite sauga.
The fate of our beloved Woodland Warriors is in your hands.
AC Family, I know we can get to the bottom of all this!
Let me know what you think we should do and do keep updated on this ongoing mite sauga
by SMASHING that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified
at every upload.
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It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to have a
better look at the mites that are on our carpenter ants.
They make me so itchy!
And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere, and you
don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony?!
You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open
window starting this month!
Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to
you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can get the most
out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site.
Visit AntsCanada.com today.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
What happens to a male ant after it mates?
Congratulations to Rogene Fermindoza who answered:
The male ants die after mating.
Congratulations Rogene, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping Handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
What is a phoretic mite?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free Ultimate Ant
Keeping Handbook from our shop!
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