Welcome to Part 11 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series, where I introduce carnivorous pitcher plants into my giant cloud rainforest to battle an invasive black crazy ant colony—what unfolds is an exciting adventure of nature’s unexpected balance!
In my giant cloud rainforest vivarium of various animals and plants, an unintentionally introduced colony of invasive black crazy ants has completely taken over the tank, so my ecological solution was to add carnivorous pitcher plants (Nepenthes sp.) to the rainforest in hopes to curb the population growth of the black crazy ants. What ended up happening to the black crazy ants, after uncovering the feeding secrets of the pitcher plants, was nothing short of an adventure! Hope you enjoy this week’s botanical episode, Part 11 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series.
I Added Carnivorous Pitcher Plants into My Giant Rainforest Vivarium
This is Pantdora, my giant 1000-gallon cloud rainforest vivarium. It’s stunning, isn’t it? This rainforest construction is my personal biological project, and its purpose is to study the evolution of a wild ecosystem, with its various interconnected flora and fauna living within. But it’s about to be changed forever. You see, an unintentionally introduced, invasive black crazy ant supercolony has run amok in the vivarium, endangering the precious ecosystem I’ve worked hard to craft, so my solution was this: Nepenthes, carnivorous pitcher plants that eat animals, including ants. But after adding them in, what would shock me the most was the ultimate revelation upon peeking into the very bellies of the pitcher plants to find out what the plants had actually eaten after just 24 hrs living in the rainforest, which left my jaw on the floor!
This is the craziest story of what happened when I added carnivorous pitcher plants into my giant rainforest vivarium to take down an entire invasive army of black crazy ants. Part 11 of my Ecosystem Vivarium series, where plants eat the animals, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and hit the BELL ICON. Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!
I covered the pots of the pitcher plants with moss and proceeded to place the pitcher plants into Pantdora. These plants needed to be planted separate from the rich soils of Pantdora because carnivorous plants like these pitchers have evolved to grow in nutrient-poor soils, and eating living creatures is how they get their nutrients. I was excited to test these pitchers to see how many insects, and specifically black ants, they could actually consume in Pantdora. But I must admit, I had my doubts they could eat enough to stop the black crazy ants, whom we’ve named the Dark Horde, from completely taking over the tank. But little did I know, I would be very surprised by how this whole pitcher plant experiment would soon turn out.
So the concept of these pitcher plants is simple: the insects are attracted to this opening of the pitcher by way of a sweet nectar, then fall inside to meet a watery doom where they drown and get digested by the plant’s enzymes. And looky here! A black crazy ant. Yay, and it looks like it’s drinking something sweet from the stem, a nectar. Interesting! I always thought the nectar that attracts the insects was only located at the lip of the pitcher known as the peristome. I had no idea it was secreted by the plant in other areas, too, and it looked like the ant loved its taste as it tapped its gaster in delight. I even caught the ant drinking from a nectar drop on the leaf before it made its way down to find yet another nectar blob on the stem.
When it was done, then came the crazy pheromone dance. Black crazy ants get their name from this erratic movement that makes them look “crazy,” but what this ant is doing is wafting “I found food” pheromones all around the area to let nearby members of the Dark Horde know that it’s lunchtime! And it looks like it’s working. Nearby ants would get the message and come around. I couldn’t believe things were already working as planned. However, it turns out the black crazy ants had plans of their own nearby. Oh no!
The Dark Horde was once again on the move. I watched as one of their queens, along with brood, marched into a thicket of moss. As we’ve seen, these black crazy ants have been non-stop on the move, nomadic in lifestyle. They set up temporary camps in strategic places around the rainforest before moving to new areas. But this time, when I realized where the ants were moving to, my heart dropped into my stomach. Oh no! Our giant trap-jaw ant queen.
Under this moss was a container in which lived a giant trap-jaw queen ant and her brood, that we planted into Pantdora since the beginning. We were hoping she would raise her first larvae into adulthood, thereby launching the start of a giant trap-jaw ant colony in these lands. But seeing the black crazy ants now marching into this area of her container, I totally freaked out. There was a possibility, however, that the queen had sealed up the door to the chamber and was safe, so I decided not to intervene and check up on the container when the Dark Horde had moved on. I had hoped the queen and her brood were safe.
It was then that I caught sight of the craziest scene. A jumping spider was up in the asparagus fern stalk, just above the ants, feeding on a black crazy ant that it had captured. But the ant, now dying, was releasing an alarm pheromone pleading for its colony to help destroy the spider that was eating it. Nearby black crazy ants who picked up the pheromone message began darting up and down the stalks in search of the enemy. The spider, with its superior eyesight, darted higher up the stalk. It knew more of the colony would soon be alarmed and find its location. The ants were on a witch hunt for the spider as they each also added to the alarm pheromone. I held my breath as I watched the news of an intruder spread to the colony below.
News of the spider and their dead colony mate made its way to ground level and soon made its way to the parade of ants, which sent several warriors to deal with and hunt for the spider above their new camp. The ants raced up the stalks. I watched as one headed straight for the jumping spider, but the spider was quick and leaped away on contact. It knew now that it needed to escape the scene fast. It looked around and jumped to a nearby stalk. It watched as the black crazy ants searched high and low for it. But lucky for this spider, it would be able to enjoy another meal and live another day with a full belly, as the black crazy ants searched desperately for their infiltrator and missing colony member.
I was happy to know there were at least some creatures in Pantdora that were preying on members of the Dark Horde. But when they would eventually move out of this area, I needed to see if they had annihilated our giant trap-jaw queen or not. I expected them to be out of here within a few hours or perhaps by evening. I prayed that our giant trap-jaw queen and her babies were, by some miracle, still alive in there. Either way, we really needed to deal with the Dark Horde and their invasion of Pantdora.
I looked back at our pitcher plants, and black crazy ants were now all over the first pitcher plant. The second pitcher plant had also attracted the black crazy ant crowds. These pitchers were now the new talk of the town. I was most excited when I spotted that the ants were now beginning their infatuation with the opening of the pitchers. I watched as ants crawled all over the peristomes. I felt the ants were getting closer and closer to falling in. Some were even hanging upside down from the hood of the pitchers. Would they fall in? I felt like a hunter watching a trap I had set.
It seemed the pitchers were also luring the ants with nectar from the outside of the pitchers, as well as the hood. They drank with gusto from these tiny drops of nectar. I actually wondered about this nectar because it wasn’t enough to completely fill the ants’ social stomachs but seemed to be just enough to keep the ants foraging the plant’s surface. My heart almost stopped as I watched an ant venture into the mouth and almost slip, but then crawl out safely. Whoa, what? Guess the inside of the pitcher wasn’t as slippery as I thought. But watching the ants, I did notice they weren’t as balanced. They actually slipped a few times, and it made me wonder if the nectar had any intoxicating agents, making the ants slightly drunk or high.
And then, suddenly, I caught sight of an ant wandering into the mouth of one of the pitchers and totally falling in. It never reemerged. Another ant climbed in but managed to climb out. My guess was that there was a certain point-of-no-return line in the pitchers that, once crossed, was impossible to go back on. Suddenly, another ant wandered in and fell inside. Awesome!
It was interesting, as well, to see that ants falling in were not releasing distress pheromones asking for help, which to me meant either the plant had a means of masking the distress pheromones from ants outside the pitchers, or the ants within were already submerged in fluid and simply couldn’t, or the ants on the outside were under the intoxicating influence of pitcher plant nectar and simply couldn’t care to respond to pleas of help from trapped colony mates. I continued to watch the pitchers as they continued to catch ants one by one.
I decided to allow the pitchers to do their thing and check up on them within 24 hrs to see just how much these plants could actually trap. I had a probe camera now that could peek directly into the pitchers’ bellies to check. But for now, I needed the camera to check something else.
The Dark Horde had surprisingly moved on from the Giant Trap-jaw Chamber. Guess the jumping spider abduction had freaked them out, so they didn’t stay long. I took the probe camera to peek into the chamber to see if I could find out about our giant trap-jaw queen.
Immediately I noticed the opening of the container was not sealed up with soil. This concerned me greatly. Moving in, I could see no trap-jaw ant queen. Perhaps she was concealed under this mound of soil? I removed the camera, removed the moss cover, and proceeded to carefully open the container by hand. Oh man. No queen, no babies. It was empty.
Now, this could mean two things. One possibility is that the queen had actually left this container long ago and built a better, safer underground chamber for herself and her brood somewhere within the soils of Pantdora, which would be a great thing. Or that the Dark Horde had indeed murdered her and the colony. I truly hoped it was the former, but only time would tell.
Despite this very concerning event, it seemed Pantdora also had a few happy surprises for me this week. The first of which was this, over at the blackwater pond. I spotted Rocksteady, our resident rhino beetle, and his cricket best friend hanging out by Blackwater Falls, having a refreshing drink. But this wasn’t the surprise.
The surprise was here. See it? A newly emerged damselfly lay delicately hardening on the vines over the pond. Wow! I couldn’t believe we now had a damselfly in the rainforest. We’ve watched it grow up since we first discovered it as a nymph in the waters, having been introduced by way of the water plants. Look at its gorgeous eyes. I loved its colour and knew it would be hardening over the next little while. I wondered what colour it would be in its fully hardened form. I couldn’t wait to find out. I also couldn’t wait to see it flying through the skies, catching flies and other winged insects in the vivarium.
Another surprise I discovered was inside the waters. Check it out. I spotted some tiny movements below the surface. Awww. How awesome! We finally have guppy fry! Baby guppies swam around searching for little bits of edibles to feed on. This was perfect! They were so cute. Have a look at them! Some of the babies were already starting to take on their parent’s gorgeous colour, and judging from the females’ fat bellies, it looked like more baby guppies were on the way! Eventually, if they start to overpopulate, we will need to add predators in the waters to control the guppy population. Any suggestions for predators to help control the guppies?
The presence of all the new fish was so beneficial for the plants. The toxic nitrogen produced from their poop was being eaten up by the roots of the floating plants, the submerged aquatic plants, as well as that of the newly blooming vines of the rainforest. Oh, the vines of the rainforest canopy are definitely one of the most exciting ongoing journeys I’ve been happily following as Pantdora continues to evolve. Due to the dirty fish water of the pond being their ultimate buffet, the vines have finally begun to thrive, with new leaves popping up all over Pantdora’s canopy. I couldn’t wait for the canopy to be just full of this greenery!
In fact, Pantdora’s plant life all over the rainforest was flourishing. The asparagus ferns were sending out new foliage and shoots. Look at this shoot! Now you can see why they call them asparagus ferns, as they look like asparagus, and indeed it’s related to the asparagus we humans eat. This huge stalk will soon be like the other huge stalk to the left, simply hanging from the vines above. It’s been about six weeks that these plants have been establishing, and I love that they are truly beginning to flourish with new growth, which is awesome because they are a favourite food to the grasshoppers of the rainforest, who I always see munching on its leaves, and leaving behind molted former skins attached to its stems.
We’ve completely watched this grasshopper grow up in Pantdora, which was super heartwarming, because, are you ready for what I discovered next, guys? It was yet another awesome surprise. Look! I spotted a baby grasshopper moving up the glass, exactly like our grasshopper did when it was a baby. And not just one baby grasshopper, but many were now seen all over the glass. Have a look! It was so beautiful to witness and usher in the new generation of Pantdora’s grasshoppers, the very first Pantdoran-born grasshopper natives. I smiled watching them do the slow-mo march exactly like their father did when he was just a young grasshopper. Watching the coming of a new generation of life is so precious, isn’t it?
Anyway, moving on with the plant tour, I’ve never really talked about these silver-looking plants, but they are one of my favourites. These are a species of begonia, a gorgeous silver colour on the top and a red underside. These plants grow in the understory of tropical forests, so to gather as much light as they can, they develop these silver pigments to absorb more light. I think they look real pretty, as do these vein plants, which add an attractive splash of colour to the forest floor. Of course, the various species of mosses growing in poofs all over the lands, including on the surface of the driftwood, add to that signature cloud forest feel of Pantdora, bordered by these cute Ficus pumila mini vines, which I’m hoping will creep further along the floor.
I also have fallen in love with the look of this lime-green philodendron at the rock shelf overhanging the pond, and these epiphytic tillandsias, which do not need soil to grow, but rather absorb their water through their leaves from the air, as well as the random, periodic splashes from Blackwater Falls onto their leaves. Also, part of the tillandsia family, Spanish moss hanging from the vines has been thriving in this environment, which makes me so happy. All together, Pantdora’s plant life was a lush and thriving botanical garden of tropical plants, truly my dream tank. And I didn’t know it yet, but the plants would soon be a major player at helping me deal with Pantdora’s biggest problem—the Dark Horde, the next day.
Night fell in Pantdora.
I spotted our Green Reaper, our female praying mantis, asleep on the glass. Stanley, our bush cricket, had also emerged to feed on vines and leaves in the canopy. Our various tree frogs, of which there were now four, were awake to begin their usual nightly hunting sprees to feed on insects. But they weren’t the only ones doing so. I spotted a baby cricket now feeding from one of our pitcher plants’ nectar. It seems the crickets were also attracted to the pitcher plant’s ambrosia. It crawled around the outside of the pitcher and up onto the hood. I watched wide-eyed, bracing myself for the moment it would fall in.
The cricket seemed pretty proficient at navigating the outside of the pitcher, as it lapped up the minuscule samples of delicious nectar on the outside of the pitcher and on the peristome. I watched it drink and wondered if it would get drunk off the nectar, like the black crazy ants did, and eventually fall in! I then noticed more crickets coming around. Two crickets were now feeding from the pitcher. They began to rough play, not knowing this was absolutely the wrong place to be playing.
Ants and a third cricket came around. And I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Suddenly, a huge momma cricket came to lick the nectar off the peristome, causing one of the babies to crawl into the pitcher and eventually lose its grip, slipping to its doom. Oh man! Cricketslaughter! The pitcher ultimately wasn’t giving up enough of the nectar to keep the adult female’s interest, so she eventually moved on, to be sung to by persistent crooning males wanting to mate. The adult crickets were actually loving the new space around the pitcher plants, as males defended their desired singing areas, but thankfully, the pitchers were still continuing to catch black crazy ants again and again!
Oh, I just couldn’t wait to check these pitchers the next day!
The Big Reveal
It was the big day. I approached the pitchers to peek inside and see just how many insects they had captured. To my surprise, they were still capturing ants! This was the moment of truth. With my probe camera, I peeked into the first pitcher plant. And then, the contents of the pitcher plant’s stomach were revealed. Whoa! Look at all those insects. It had captured a lot of black crazy ants, but what surprised me the most was all the winged alates it caught! See those ants with wings? Those are male and female alates, virgin males and queen ants, meaning the black crazy ants in charge of reproduction and growing the Dark Horde. I guess they too were attracted to the pitchers and fell in.
Seeing this was perhaps the greatest news because trapping all these reproductives meant better population control of the Dark Horde. I could also see a cricket or two in there.
Alright, now time to check the second and larger pitcher to see what sorts of things it managed to consume! I went in with the probe camera and was stunned by what I saw. Man, several baby crickets were seen floating around dead on the surface, but what truly shocked me about this pitcher was the amount of ants and other insects that had settled to the very bottom of the pitcher. That was a very considerable amount of ants, and I do see a cricket down there as well. Though I couldn’t see the exact constituents of the mass of submerged insects very well, I bet there were a lot of winged alates down there, too. This was all totally amazing to see.
It was clear that these pitchers were hands down brilliant insect-trapping machines! It had only been 24 hours, and the pitchers had proven to capture quite a bit of ants. And to think, these pitch plants only had one pitcher each. There were more pitchers growing on the way which would go on to capture a similar amount of insects.
So, what do you guys think? Do you think we should add more of these pitcher plants to deal with our Dark Horde problem?
Progress After Three Days
After three days, I peeked into the pitchers again and was pleased to see that the first pitcher had caught an incredible amount of ants, most of which had sunk to the bottom of the pitcher and were now being digested by the plant. The second pitcher was also much fuller than the last time, with most of the insects sunk to the bottom as they were being digested. Once the pitchers had had enough insects, they would soon begin to wilt like some of the other pitchers, but the nutrients gathered from the trapped insects would definitely help the plant grow and create more pitchers.
Overall, I was so happy with the results. I wasn’t sure if the pitchers would help put a dent in the black crazy ant population, but I resolved to continue monitoring the pitchers’ progress. If they thrive, I’ll surely consider getting more—perhaps try other species as well. I specifically wanted to see if they preferred the drier area behind the tree stump or the more humid spot closer to the fog stream up on the moss wall.
Now, AC Family, you won’t believe this, but as I was looking at the moss wall, my eyes fixated on a place that instantly made my heart race. Look! In one of the tillandsias, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The Dark Horde was nested into the tillandsia at rest. This looked like a considerable amount of the colony, too. I guess the alluring pitcher plants had convinced the Dark Horde to station themselves at a location conveniently nearby, and I realized, as I watched the Dark Horde, inactive and mostly asleep, that this was the perfect opportunity to make my move.
The giant tillandsia had set it up perfectly for me. I went in and slowly moved away the Ficus pumila vine, trying my best not to alarm the colony, and then, when I was ready…
Yoink! I snatched the entire tillandsia plant, which was easy because it wasn’t attached to soil, and placed the entire plant with the colony into a sealed container. Have a look at how many ants were in there! This was easily a few thousand black crazy ants, complete with egg-laying queens!
This trapped colony could now be moved into an AC Ant Farm and make a great donation to a local school. Goodbye! I knew we had captured a great amount of the colony because I could see a stray queen wandering around, looking for where the majority of the colony went. I abducted her to join the rest of the Dark Horde.
Though there were several ants still left behind, the best-case scenario was that there were no queens left behind. If that was the case, then we would have single-handedly put an end to the Dark Horde once and for all. But if there was even just one queen left behind, the Dark Horde would eventually grow back to their powerful numbers. However, the fact that we got rid of a majority of the ants was amazing because it would give the other ants in the lands a better chance to compete with the Dark Horde and keep them from completely taking over the rainforest.
Either way, I was so grateful this week to the plants of Pantdora. The pitchers had actually surprised me with the amount of black crazy ants they were able to consume, so to me they were a great choice. Thank you, AC Family, for recommending them to me in the past. It was a great move!
I then noticed that the new asparagus fern stalk had been eaten, most likely by Stanley, our bush cricket, the night before, but this didn’t bother me, as I could see new buds and stalks growing all over the plant, both from the main stalks as well as from the outer branches. Plants were resilient and regenerative life forms!
This all made me realize how essential plants are for animals and how we animals are essential for plants. I mean, check this! Stanley’s discarded leftover leaves littered the rainforest floor, where they were being eaten by other insects like baby crickets, as were the discarded vines. The poop from these herbivorous insects would then go on to provide fertilizer for the plants. Some of the insects would fall prey to the predators of the rainforest, and the resulting poop from these predators would become food for soil creatures, which would then also poop and thereby provide more plant fertilizer. Some of the insects would fall into the pond, which would become food for fish and aquatic life, or simply rot, and both outcomes would eventually produce plant food, which continues the cycle all over again, with plants nourished by animals and animals nourished by plants.
Of course, plants take in carbon dioxide produced by animals and, through photosynthesis, produce oxygen for animals to breathe. Plants eating up the toxic nitrogen from the waters keep the waters clean for land animals to drink and for aquatic animals to live in. It seems that, for millions of years, plants and animals have been the biological yin and yang of nature, two teams of organisms intertwined in a complex and beautiful game of interdependence.
But perhaps the most amazing thing I learned this week about plants was that each plant in our rainforest had evolved different and unique solutions to resolve that same necessary need for nutrients. Whether it was extracting nitrogen and food directly from the soils, from the surfaces of decaying wood, directly from fishy pond water, collecting it from droplets splashed onto their leaves, or in the case of our new pitcher plants, obtaining it directly from cleverly captured insects within highly specialized traps, every plant had its own brilliant design geared toward survival. Their existence in the rainforest ensured all of life as a whole would thrive.
And as I watched it rain in Pantdora, I couldn’t help but stare at the beauty of the ecosystem we created, and I was reminded of the fact that, as long as the plants of our planet were living out their best lives, so too would we, ours.
But my work to defeat the Dark Horde was not done. Over the next few days, I didn’t see any black crazy ant trail anywhere, which to me meant we had removed a considerable amount of black crazy ants. Only time would tell if we removed all the queens and therefore the colony for good.
However, in this Dark Horde absence, I knew now was the perfect time to set important competitors in place within the ecosystem so that Pantdora would become a more hostile environment in case the Dark Horde was attempting to make a comeback. It was time to introduce more ants, a native species that I felt would integrate seamlessly into the rainforest bioscape while making it hard for the black crazies to thrive. These ants were bigger, tougher, and had a much more powerful defensive formic acid spray. I’ve been wanting to introduce these ants since the very beginning of Pantdora’s creation but couldn’t until now.
Oh, carpenter ants! Welcome to your new home of Pantdora!
Well, well, well. Lady Deathstrike, my beloved huntsman goddess. What do we have here? I see legs, lots of tiny beautiful legs. Perfect! The Era of Arachnida is near!
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