Hey hey #AntTwitter! Specifically #leafcutterant folks! I am making a leaf cutter life cycle ant simulation game with some neat folks!

This is gonna be a thread of some HARD HITTING ant questions you can probably help us answer! Hopefully we'll have an awesome+ accurate game!

#nuptialflight , tropical leaf cutters in Panama seem to do their mating flight right after the beginning of the wet season, right? Do they tend to fly under a full moon, or new moon?

Before leaving their birth colony, new queens have a chunk of fungus on their mouth (to start the new fungus in their own colony)

Do they specifically chomp a chunk before flying off to mate, or do they just have some because they were eating fungus?

#nuptialflight new queens try to mate with lots of different males to have a nice genetic diversity stored up in their spermatheca. But like HOW MANY ant males would one mate with? 5? 10? 100? 1000?

(told y'all these were gonna be HARD HITTING #antquestions!)

For the males in the nuptial flight, they just sorta mate and then die right? But do they just mate once with one queen, get sleepy and go die? Or do they mate with a couple before #lapetitemort (vraiment est #lamortrégulière)?

During the big swarming flight, do males go after queens? Do queens chase males? Does everyone go after everyone? #whatarethecharacteristicsofthisskyorgy?

What's the limiting factor in how long a queen is gonna mate for during a #nuptialflight ? Is it like after a certain number of matings she calls it quits? Is it an energy thing? Is it a time thing ( #lightsonintheclub go home)?

(many more questions gonna be added!)

After mating, a new queen lands, digs a hole, digests her wing muscles internally, and lays a first batch of brood.
Does this first batch immediately go out and hunt leaves to feed the fungus? Or do they collect some other nutrients until the colony gets larger ?

When a newly mated Queen tears her wings off, she uses a leg right? Is there a specific leg she uses?

When a new Queen is digging, how does she dig? Does she use her mouth, or legs like a dog? If she uses her mouth how does she keep the fungus in her mouth?