The Lab Notebook
Care tips, species spotlights, research, and community updates from the TrapJaw team.
How To Find And Catch A Queen Ant After A Nuptial Flight
When queen ants fly, where they land, how to blacklight for them, what to bring, and how to get your queen home safely to a test tube.
Best PVA Test Tube Sponge For Ants? 5 Setups Tested
Results from testing TJL sponges against cotton and three other test tube sponges.
New Discovery: Fungus-Farmers Can Be Reared In TJL Sponges
Why we founded 50+ Trachymyrmex septentrionalis (Northern Fungus-farming Ant) queens with TJL sponges this year, and why it's now our preferred method for founding them.
Best Beginner Ants?
Five species that are beginner-friendly and why your state of residence heavily influences which one we'd recommend.
Remembering Steve Irwin
TrapJaw Labs looks back on Steve Irwin's legacy as a wildlife warrior, 20 years after his tragic death. Miles shares personal stories and insights in how Steve Irwin inspired him, and how those insights power TrapJaw moving forward.
How to Identify Camponotus Queens in the Southeastern US
A visual guide to the "Carpenter Ant" queens of the Southeastern U.S., from the giants at the porch light to the twig-nesters under 10 mm.
How Ant-Keeping Began And Where We're Headed
Two hundred years of keeping ants in boxes, from Huber's glass plates in 1810 to where the hobby sits now.
How to Identify Solenopsis Queens in the Southeastern US
A visual guide to the "Fire Ant" and "Thief Ant" queens of the Southeastern U.S. as well as a quick cheat-sheet.
A New Frontier in Ant-Keeping: Pheidole littoralis
How we reared Pheidole littoralis in captivity, something that's never been done before.
Species Spotlight: Trachymyrmex septentrionalis
The northernmost fungus-farming ant on the planet, and one of the easiest to keep once you get the humidity right.
Why We Only Sell Queens With Workers
Why every colony we ship has workers in it, and why we won't sell you a founding queen on her own.
How To Diapause Your Ants
Which of the species we stock actually need a winter, what we keep them at, and why the colony decides when it starts rather than the calendar.
Southeastern US Ant Nuptial Flights
Nuptial flight records for the far southeastern United States: 7,620 observations across 161 species, charted by month and by time of day.
How to Identify Pheidole Queens in the Southeastern US
A visual guide to the most commonly encountered Pheidole queens in the southeastern U.S., with identification tips, comparison photos, and common lookalikes.
PVA Test Tube Sponges & Cotton Experiment
Results from testing the TrapJaw Labs PVA Sponges.
Keep Your Ants Illuminated
Although it'd seem like you should keep your ants' nest dark, like it would be in the wild, TJL has found it's usually best not to.
Species Spotlight: Pheidole bicarinata
A closer look at Pheidole bicarinata: how to separate them from their look-alikes, where they actually live, what the literature still doesn't know, and how they behave in a captive setup.
5 Critical Care Tips
The five things that go wrong most often when you are keeping a species that does not have a care guide yet.