Moonlight with Trees

NEW VIDEO: How My Giant Rainforest Vivarium Transforms at Night


My giant rainforest vivarium becomes an entirely different beast at night, I explored my ecosystem vivaria, Orchadia and Pantdora, to see what life was like in the night. The nocturnal species of animals in our rainforest was mind blowing!

 

 

How My Giant Rainforest Vivarium Transforms at Night

This is Orchadia, my giant cloud rainforest canopy vivarium, a reconstruction of the lush tropical treetops of the rainforest, connected to a giant rainforest floor vivarium on the floor below, called Pantdora. Through these living vivaria, I study the dynamics of wild ecosystems in an ongoing quest to uncover Mother Nature’s most hidden biological secrets.

But I’ve learned that our rainforest lives a double life. There’s the rainforest by day, when diurnal creatures are awake and active, and then there’s a rainforest by night, when all diurnal creatures go to bed and the nocturnal team of life comes out to play. I’ve come to discover this rainforest of the night is a completely different beast, full of the wildest creatures, strange lifeforms, new characters, and bold armies that can go to war at any moment.

What strange and wild discoveries can we make on a night walk through our rainforest within glass? It’s time to find out here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

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Snap, our resident sun skink, was getting in his last bit of basking time before bed. In the canopy, a pregnant jumping spider was looking for a place to retire for the night. All the daytime animals of the rainforest were wrapping up a full day of activity as the rainforest was gearing up for its nightly transformation.

But before the rainforest moves into its night shift, an event was about to take place, involving the release of a brand-new queen.

I held Anitu, our new massive queen of the trees, up to the light. Let’s hope she survives whatever killed the others before her. I released her into Orchadia, where she leaped onto a vine.

Anitu, a species of giant grasshopper of the bush cricket family, was the sixth specimen of bush crickets I’ve attempted to introduce into the forest, but all bush crickets before her have vanished, likely falling victim to predation by the various predators lurking around the rainforest.

It looks to me like she had survived an altercation of her own with a predator before catching her from outside. She had a missing leg. But Anitu here was the biggest Orthopteran I’ve ever seen in my life, and I hoped her size would provide her a greater chance of survival in our rainforest. I needed her to survive to help control the growth of the leaves.

With grace and ethereal beauty, Anitu made her way up the vine. She stopped on a patch of moss and began to nibble on it. These were strange lands, but I had a feeling she would soon feel right at home in our canopy.

Anitu rested to preserve her energy for the coming of night, and she would definitely be needing it, for the night was a whole new playing field in these treetops.

A Dolichoderus ant was working the graveyard shift, standing over a mealybug from which it was hoping to drink honeydew.

“Hey, what’s up?” a coworker approached.

“Just milking this mealybug.”

Together, the ants stroked the mealybug with their antennae to stimulate it to release the goods.

These mealybugs are the primary sugary food source for all the ants of the rainforest, a valuable ant resource worth warring over. In fact, the rainforest was full of various colonies of ants, each with slightly different lifestyles, but at times, engaging in warfare with competing ant species.

The most dangerous enemies in the rainforest are the invasive species, of which there are three. There’s one of them now: a black crazy ant, a highly invasive species, swooshing through the branches, too fast for the Dolichoderus ants to notice.

So far, they haven’t caused trouble, but this species has been highly destructive in the past, and I had to trap and vacuum them up to help save the rainforest ecosystem they were about to collapse. I’m sure we’ll run into the other invasive ant clans as we snoop around the rainforest tonight.

Meanwhile, snooping around was the business of a lot of the rainforest creatures at this time, who were just waking up.

The geckos were hungry and had emerged from their sleep to hunt for prey. This young gecko, with eyes perfect for spotting prey in the dark, was looking for appropriately sized insects to eat tonight. There’s a whole self-renewing population of these geckos in our rainforest now, and like a forest ranger, I’ve been monitoring their droppings. Ah, beautiful poop is a good sign the geckos are healthy.

Tonight, this gecko was hoping to catch small flying insects like drain flies, which were found all over the canopy. He was not interested in the small Crematogaster ants running around. They taste bad due to their ability to shoot formic acid as a defense. They also weren’t meaty enough.

These Crematogaster ants, whom we’ve named the Crematoblasters, recently reappeared in our rainforest after adding a new tree a couple of weeks back, so these are technically the Crematoblasters 2.0.

They’re interesting ants, also known as acrobat ants, due to the fact that they love to run around with their butts in the air, like they’re doing handstands.

The Crematoblasters love life up in the trees, where they inhabit wood. I’ve actually been looking for their nest, and after some snooping around, I noticed this: sawdust! Evidence and trash from their nest construction projects.

I looked up and almost missed it, but do you see that little pile of sawdust? Above it was the discreet opening to their nest. They’re hollowing out tunnels in the wood and dumping the sawdust outside, making a mess.

Now, these Crematoblasters are native and one of the good guys in our rainforest. But sharing their love for nesting in wood are their direct competitors and enemies.

Red ants have long claimed dominion of the branches in Orchadia and have been driving the Crematoblasters away from their sections of the tree. The Crematoblasters are tough but surprisingly not as tough as the red ants!

These red ants, an invasive and stinging species, were imported unintentionally into our canopy by way of the plants. They are like arboreal versions of fire ants—just ferocious and unyielding against any living creature.

They frequent the banyan leaves in search of edibles.

Now you might be asking yourself, if these invasive ants are so dangerous, why aren’t you taking measures to get rid of them? Well, I will if they get out of hand. Otherwise, I’m not going to interfere with the natural flow of nature.

You see, invasions happen all the time in the wild, and observing how an invasive species integrates into a new ecosystem is also valuable research. What’s good is that a healthy and robust ecosystem like ours should be able to push back against invasions—kind of like how a body deals with a foreign virus.

We’ll see. For now, the red ants are not a problem, as they haven’t killed other ant species, driven them to homelessness by driving other ants out of their nests, nor monopolized the food.

One introduction of a species that a lot of people were against when I first put them into the tank were these creatures. Arachnophobes, look away for a sec.

Up by a patch of moss was a mother cradling her new spawn. She was a giant huntsman spider, and in her embrace was an egg sac which she had been carrying for weeks. Tonight, the babies were beginning to emerge into the world from a tear in the egg sac.

This mother huntsman was born from Lady Deathstrike, the main mother ancestor of huntsmen in our rainforest, which means she was natively born in our forest. These babies were now the third generation of huntsmen.

By the way, speaking of Lady Deathstrike, we now have a limited edition handmade Lady Deathstrike Plushie with a detachable egg sac at my site antscanada.com. It’s perfect because everything at the shop is now 15% off until Jan 1st, including ant farm kits and ant-keeping books. Shop now for the holidays. We ship worldwide.

Anyway, this spiderling here is a three-week-old huntsman, born from another mother—a sister to this mother—which means it was a cousin to the newly hatched spiderlings. They have been valuable predators in our rainforest, and all ants, even the red ants, seem to keep away from them.

But guys, now that we’re here, I noticed something truly amazing that you will love. Have a closer look at this area here, on the tree bark. It looks like just an ordinary space of bark, but if you look closely, there is a ton of life that has developed here.

I see mites, random creatures, springtails, and even a centipede.

And guys, check out the magic of this biological zone of our canopy. Organic compounds like tannins leach from the wood and leaves of the treetops. This runoff gathers in natural pools in the canopy—tree hollows, natural bowls formed in branches, and cracks of bark.

It’s essentially a natural tea that offers valuable nutrients for plants and animals. Furthermore, creatures drown in the puddles and decay, as well as fallen leaf litter, which adds to this potent brew of nutrients. The life forms that benefit from it are abundant!

New plants are springing forth from these treetop wet areas, nourished by the tea. The banyan trees, which have roots invested in these areas, are just blooming with joy from the nitrogen. Some of the runoff gets caught in webbing, where spiders and other creatures can drink from it.

It’s amazing how our canopy is self-nourishing and self-generating—a great sign of a working ecosystem.

And it seems our latest ecosystem plans are working. Anitu had begun her great work, taking her place as the primary herbivore in the trees. I was so happy she was enjoying the taste of these banyan leaves because I was a bit worried I wouldn’t be able to find a herbivore that could:

1.survive the various predators in Orchadia, and

2.safely eat the banyan leaves.

You see, these banyan trees belong to the genus Ficus, which contain a milky sap that is noxious and sometimes toxic to many creatures. But it seems like Anitu here is immune to the sap. I knew she would be the perfect queen of the trees for herbivory.

When she had her fill, she began to move. Up higher, she went in search of the perfect bedroom fit for a tree queen. I tried adding another one of her species to Pantdora below, but it disappeared, perhaps due to being eaten by the resident caiman. We’ll be going down to Pantdora later.

But up here, she was safe. Good luck, Anitu, and thank you for your service.

Kermit, one of the resident tree frogs, had watched the grasshopper the whole time. It needed to keep its eye on the larger creatures in case it was some reptile or predatory invertebrate. Kermit, however, was not worried and was content sitting on his branch looking for a potential meal to scurry by.

But there were things one could spot around the rainforest that were difficult to identify.

Guys, question: What do you think this is? At first, I thought “fungus,” like some weird mushroom, but I couldn’t find anything like it online. Any fungi experts care to take a stab at its ID?

I also found this peculiar collection of leaf litter and debris all wrapped together by fungus. Ants love crawling through it, and I also noticed an Asian longhorned beetle trying to blend in with the mass.

Speaking of beetles, I spotted this cool primitive weevil hanging out on the leaves, as well as this brand-new creature I have never seen in our rainforest but have been wanting to add forever! Check it out! It’s an earwig! It was chewing on a dead roach carcass, and it looks like they were friends with the red ants.

Overall, it seems our canopy ecosystem, which has taken some time to develop, is looking A-OK. But now it’s time to head down to the forest floor to Pantdora, whose ecosystem is even more evolved and robust.

In the darkness, a dinosaur lay in rest. Godzilla, our resident baby caiman, lay in ambush for an unsuspecting creature to venture close to the waters or fall in. He’s starting to get big and, as mentioned in previous episodes, is scheduled to move out of Pantdora soon.

Look at those teeth! Stunning creature, but his size and therefore his appetite have made him no longer a good fit for our rainforest ecosystem here. He’s also gone ahead and messed up the pond by uprooting the plants and eating all the fish that used to frolic in this pond.

He is such a beautiful beast. I mean, look at those eyes! Truth is, I’m going to miss him once he moves out into his next home, which at first I thought was going to be a future swamp vivarium. But seeing how he’s eaten all the fish and moved the decor around to his liking, I think he is better suited to a permanent outdoor 60-ft pond in my yard, out of our ant room.

We’ll see, but for now, let’s let him enjoy his time in Pantdora.

While the nocturnal creatures were wide awake now, others were catching a quick snooze.

A golden carpenter ant was asleep on the glass. They usually have night shift workers so that work happens around the clock, but this night shift worker seems to be in the middle of a nap, which the busiest ants in an ant colony make sure to do hundreds of times a day so that they can work around the clock for both day and night.

I spotted a cool new fly on a leaf. I loved its rad design!

Hunting such prey insects were more huntsmen, these incredible giant trap-jaw ants with their enormous bear-trap-like mandibles, which can shut at record speeds and lethal pressures the moment trigger hairs between the jaws are touched, and Asian bullet ants, also out hoping to catch prey.

Under some driftwood, a land crab was resting, also waiting for prey to scuttle by.

In the soil, I spotted a tunnel—a tunnel which belongs to the Gnomads, a massive colony of gnome ants. It was awesome seeing how bioactive the soil ecosystem was here in Pantdora. Check out the multitude of little worms, mites, springtails, and other microscopic creatures, who all contribute to the health of the soil as they eat garbage left behind by the ants and other organisms and poop it all out to add nutrients to the soil for the plants.

Even algae seem to be growing in certain parts. Imagine living in a home that is self-cleaning. It’s yet again the true magic of a healthy and working ecosystem.

So you see, the rainforest at night is far from asleep.

There’s a quote by a man named Nikolaj Berdyaev that says: “The night is not less wonderful than the day, it is not less divine; in the night the stars shine, and there are revelations that the day ignores.”

Although most of this series has been centered around daytime happenings—mostly because I can’t stay up long enough to capture everything that goes on at night in the vivaria—the transformation of the rainforest into its very lively night world is vital to the rainforest’s well-being.

Mother Nature seems to run on cycles, perhaps because this is just how life managed to evolve or was designed that way, due to how our planet spins and travels around our sun.

The Earth shares a rotating day and night phase, so all of life has simply evolved based on such an energy template. It’s why for me, the daytime-nighttime cycle has been one of the coolest things to witness in this project.

The biological interactions and events that take place at night are pretty mind-blowing, considering how complex and beautiful the night ecosystem is, with the coming of new generations, the finding of new discoveries, and the pondering of peculiar mysteries, how we welcome new players to the food chain, and enjoy the final days of old ones.

I went to bed, exhausted but heart full.

The next day, I spotted Snap, our resident sun skink, swallowing a meal he had captured: a fat roach! He devoured it like a velociraptor eating Jurassic Park staff. When he was done, he basked on top of the pothos to digest in peace.

But nearby, at the top of the stump, a ghostly force was boiling up from within that made my heart drop into the pit of my stomach. Oh no! So this was where they were living.

The rainforest’s third invasive enemy: a supercolony of ghost ants had moved into the stump, home to a variety of native ant species and one termite species.

This was bad! The ghost ant incursion had begun.

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