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 38 stunted seedling/sapling DHJanzen100120.jpg high resolution
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| The seedling ant-acacia eventually produces its first several thorns, here visible in the crown of the young small plant. Newly fecundated queens, searching the habitat for unoccupied ant-acacias find these plants and attempt to occupy one of the thorns. If the thorns are old, as are those in this photograph, they have an entrance hole cut into them by some earlier queen, and there will be a queen inside blocking the entrance hole with her head while she waits for her first brood in the thorn to mature. If the thorn is still green and soft (see below, DHJanzen100121.jpg), she cuts her hole, enters and joins the race. If there are four thorns on the seedling, for example, there will be four founding queens in this process (and several sitting on the foliage outside waiting, until taken by a predator or chased off). However, a queen has to go out to get food sometime (Beltian bodies, nectar) and when she does, sometimes another queen gets in and blocks her return. The new queen then tries to start her colony. If there are many queens, none may ever get started. If there are few, it still takes 6-9 months before a queen has just a few workers in her new small colony. These workers then attempt to kill all the other queens in the tree, and eventually the tree gets a growing (and then, patrolling) colony. The tree may stay in this stunted state (only 5-20 cm tall) with a few thorns and a few founding queens for years (unless the other other plants grow over it, shade it, and it then eventually dies). | ||
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