Night Anting, 31/3/2018

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      Yesterday night (3/30/18), I went on a night hike near Mt. Diablo, CA. This post will cover everything ant-related during the hike. My father and I got there at around 9:15 PM, and began our little adventure.  My goal during this hike was to catch the largest species of ant native to Northern California,  a carpenter ant that nests in oak trees, that goes by the scientific name of Camponotus Quercicola. These are one of my favorite species, due to their gigantic size. They are interesting because, unlike most other species of ant in the United States, they are only found in CA! The reason we decided to hike at night, is because most species of carpenter ants are primarily nocturnal, and although the queens typically fly earlier on during the day, they are out and about most at night (if you have no idea what a flight of ants is, check out a previous post that covers it here) And now, onto the hike...

      My friend, who lives nearby, met us at the opening of the trail, and we began our hike up. For around the first quarter mile, the trail was pretty barren of ant-life, but soon, we started to see nests of the common ground nesting carpenter ant, Camponotus Vicinus. These ants, being nocturnal, had the advantage of being able to nest on the trail. Had they been active during the day, they would have been crushed by all of the hikers that traveled the trail. They have three sizes of workers, minors, which are the smallest, medias, which are bigger than minors, and have slightly larger heads, and majors, which have huge heads and bodies, and are tasked with defending the colony from any threats, and assisting smaller workers with taking down prey or carrying large food items. 
    
       Anyways, after about a mile of hiking, we came to an area with oak trees lining the trail. It was then, that we started looking on the oak trees that this species nests in. Immediately, we saw huge, black ants crawling up and down the trees. We observed all angles of each of these trees, looking for queen ants, that were looking for a place to start a nest. After about 2 minutes, we found the first queen, and proceeded to quickly catch it. I was unable to get pictures of catching them, as it was far too dark. We walked about 250 yards down, and then back again, over and over. Eventually, we had found a total of 14 queens between my friend and I, all but a few on live oak trees! We did catch a couple looking lost and disoriented on the actual trail. This was thrilling to me, as they had been one of the species that I wanted ever so desperately, since learning about them. Along the way, we also encountered other, somewhat interesting creatures. There were centipedes, millipedes, loads of spiders, some sort of long, skinny amphibian, moths, and more. We kept going back and forth for over an hour, and then we decided that it was time to head back. Of the 14 we caught, I got 7 of them, which I was thrilled to keep. I managed to take a few decent macro images of some of the queens, shown on the right.


     Overall, the trip was a great success, and I really enjoyed the trip with my father and my friend. We managed to catch a queen of arguably my favorite species native to Northern California, which in my opinion, made the trip oh so worthwhile. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, thanks for reading!

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