Murderous Ants killed nymph iris oratorias! Help!

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[email protected]

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I have iris oratoria. I have a few ooths laid on a tree in my backyard. Each ooth usually hatches 6-14 nymphs at a time for about a week. This last week, I saw that my ooths were hatching, but only found a couple nymphs.

Today I saw an ooth start to hatch about 14 nymphs, then an army of ants came. I tried to kill the ants, but I couldn't get them. I only saved 3 nymphs. I was helpless! I'm guessing that same ooth will hatch some more nymphs tomorrow.

I really don't want to hack my tree to cut the ooths off. Also, I noticed that once I move the ooth, while it is in its hatching week (or it is disturbed from a storm), it stops hatching. So, that might not work anyway.

How do I kill the ants without hurting the nymphs!!??

Please help!

 
Ants are a powerful force. I keep a healthy ever growing antfarm with queen and everything and I know what they are capable of. Even more, Last Winter, my colony was invaded and almost destroyed by an invasive species of ant that found the antfarm. Luckily my ants protected the queen and so with my help it prevailed.

You have no choice but to move the ooth elsewhere. Killing ants will only attract more ants to the area. Insecticides are obviously out of question. Natural ant deterrents (ex:salt, pepper, vinegar...) don't really work very well. Even if the ooth stops hatching it may resume. It's probably a better option than risking losing all nymphs.

 
Wow! Killing them attracts more? that is crazy! Thanks for your advice!

I was thinking that maybe instead of killing them I could deter them with cat food. It would only work if I applied above and below the ooth as I see the first nymph start to hatch. I would catch the nymphs as I usually do so that they don't get stuck in the cat food/ ant mess. Would the ants stops at the cat food?

That is probably very risky. I did start to try to cut the ooth out of the bark, but it is a very hard tree. So that is the only way?

 
[email protected] said:
Wow! Killing them attracts more? that is crazy! Thanks for your advice!

I was thinking that maybe instead of killing them I could deter them with cat food. It would only work if I applied above and below the ooth as I see the first nymph start to hatch. I would catch the nymphs as I usually do so that they don't get stuck in the cat food/ ant mess. Would the ants stops at the cat food?

That is probably very risky. I did start to try to cut the ooth out of the bark, but it is a very hard tree. So that is the only way?
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Yes. By crushing ants, their corpses will release huge clouds of alarm pheromones that will entice fellow ants to the scene for a fight.

Edit: They don't really need to be crushed to release the alarm actually. The simple fact of the ant's body just shutting down will trigger a chain of reactions as a last kind of warning to her companions.

Cat food isn't much of a deterrent but actually a decoy you mean? You're trying to deviate the attention of the ants elsewhere if I understood correctly.

That may work for a short period of time but when the ants find food they will call other ants and let them know there's something good to eat. You're basically increasing the number of ants in the area and so increasing the likelihood that they will find the ooth as well. Ants are opportunists. They may find cat food but they will not ignore other foods. Predator ants will prefer bugs more than any other type of food.

You don't need to rip the bark of the tree. You can grab the ooth gently and move it from side to side hoping that it will come off more easily. Some foam may come out but the eggs are very well protected in a harder carapace inside the foam. I honestly think it's your best bet.

 
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Yeah I meant decoy.

That is amazing about the ants. Such a small ant to release enough pheromones for alarm. Wow! I used to think they were telepathic. (Not really, but I wondered how 1 little ant could call an army!)

I will try to remove the ooth like you said, but I can't use superglue especially if they hatch again tomorrow. How do I attach the ooth to something else without hurting it?

 
[email protected] said:
Yeah I meant decoy.

That is amazing about the ants. Such a small ant to release enough pheromones for alarm. Wow! I used to think they were telepathic. (Not really, but I wondered how 1 little ant could call an army!)

I will try to remove the ooth like you said, but I can't use superglue especially if they hatch again tomorrow. How do I attach the ooth to something else without hurting it?
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Ants are really amazing when you get to understand them. Pretty much all major colony insects: Wasps, bees, termites and ants are not to be underestimated. But from that list, ants beat them all to the punch by far because they have the most numbers, they are the most aggressive, very good chemical weapons and the fastest communication methods. You may have seen or heard about ants raiding wasp or termite nests but never the other way around.

The preferred communication method is pheromones but they can also communicate with ground vibrations.

If you're interested, here's a small video a posted a while back of an ant communicating with vibrations while another stands guard. I gave them a butterfly pupa but they didn't really like it and tried covering it with sand. It's not uncommon for butterflies to have ant deterrents in them so they can pupate safely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ita_I1ISCE4&index

About the ooth. I once used superglue before knowing that it could harm it but it wasn't affected and hatched well. I was probably lucky, though.

A simpler and less possibly harmful way is rolling a piece of duct tape like a tube or cylinder to make all sides sticky. Stick one side to the bottom of the ooth and the other to whatever surface you want :p

I heard some people using hot-glue, which apparently doesn't harm the ooth. I never used it myself, though.

 
Ok. Thank you! I'll try and let you know what happens. I have feeling that the ooth will stop hatching. I noticed that the only outdoor places the ooths are not getting attacked by ants are in the direct sunlight like on my wall. I live in AZ and it gets hot!

 
Why not put the ooths in an appropriate container and move them indoors temporarily, out of harms way. Take care of the hatched nymphs until they are big enough to to take care of themselves, then you can release them back outdoors, to teach those ants a lesson.

 
Ha Ha! I'm thinking of it for a couple days anyway. I have half an ooth left. (I'd probably end up keeping them indoors because I love them so much!.) Last year I had the same thought. I thought if I started them indoors they would do better outside. It didn't work because here in AZ they could not acclimate to the hot weather and died. It gets to over 110 here in the summer.

For now I moved them to a sunnier area, but I don't know if they will resume hatching, they may not like the sun themselves right now because it is really hot here. They do great in the late winter and early spring in the sun!

Thank you though!

 
Was it the annoying argentine black ants?

They kill a few of my E. pennata nymphs every year and raid oothecas.

 
I looked up the argentine ant. It is possible that is what it was. They are extremely small and black. Much smaller than the nymphs. Once the nymphs hatched they were ok, but these tiny, tiny ants swarmed while they were hatching. I never bothered trying to kill them before because they don't sting and I didn't realize. . . that is what happened to all my babies! Uggh!

Sorry you lost some nymphs too.

 
These ants are really powerful, determined little buggers. A couple times I had ants take up residence inside the pots of my potted plant. Whenever I give the plants a good drench, swarms and swarms of ants would crawl out, all over the plant, up my arms, over my shoes, I was still feeling ants crawling up my skin, long after they were gone. I haven't found a good way to deal with them other than to continuously spray with water and flush them down the sink. My parents used ant traps/bait. Personally I don't like using anything toxic for pest control.

 
Danny. said:
Was it the annoying argentine black ants?

They kill a few of my E. pennata nymphs every year and raid oothecas.
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Argentines were also the ones raiding my antfarm and they killed quite a lot of my mantids throughout the years.

Those are ants on steroids because they form super colonies on non native regions. They aren't fussy when nesting, they change nests very often, unlike most ant species they have several queens, sometimes several hundreds of queens per colony, which is mind blowing. They don't sting or shoot acid but they don't need to. With their impossible numbers they overpower and wipe out any other ant species. They have a more sensitive and powerful sensory apparatus so they can get to food faster than other ants, effectively starving the competition.

Their only weakness is the weather. They avoid extremely cold places and also dislike very hot and dry places. As a tropical species, hot and moist weather is their favorite but they also love temperate regions.

If you have Argentine ants that's a very real threat to your mantids. 1 ant finding your mantis enclosures is all it takes.

 
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[email protected] said:
I looked up the argentine ant. It is possible that is what it was. They are extremely small and black. Much smaller than the nymphs. Once the nymphs hatched they were ok, but these tiny, tiny ants swarmed while they were hatching. I never bothered trying to kill them before because they don't sting and I didn't realize. . . that is what happened to all my babies! Uggh!

Sorry you lost some nymphs too.
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What is cool is E. pennata turns the tables at L2-L3 and will eat the ants! :D
 
I put all my fruit fly containers on a platform covered with diatomaceous earth to keep mites from getting into my cultures and have used diatomaceous earth to kill ants as well. It also hurts lizards and other invertebrates, so I do use it sparingly.

However, in the Monsoon season I use a lot of it along both my front and back door as, at this time, the ants suddenly think that it is okay for them to invade my house. Diatomaceous earth is completely non-toxic to humans, but would be very lethal if a mantis were to be covered with it.

 
It worked!!! I got at least 7 new nymphs yesterday! But today, the ooth stopped hatching. I wonder why. Maybe it is too hot and sunny where I placed the ooth. That's why there are no ants there I think?

 

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