I am creating a new (fictional lol) species of ant with conditions perfectly designed for sentience to evolve :D

(just so you know the ant in the picture is not an A. sapiens, it's a badly drawn A. balzani which is an actually real ant species that happened to be easy to find a picture of because it's just on wikipedia)

The Acromyrmex genus is part of the Attini clade (which also includes Atta and Amoimyrmex) which is the fancy way of saying that they're a kind of leafcutter ant! They are visually most noticeably have 4 primary spines on their thoracic cuticle in quadrilateral positioning, with some other secondary ones closer to the middle, as well as 2 spines on the back of their heads with bilateral positioning.

They have 4 worker castes:

1. Minima (Tenders of the brood & fungal garden, or protectors of leaves & foragers in transportation)

2. Minores (Secondary foragers)

3. Mediae (Primary foragers)

4. Majores (Defenders, but not aggressive like soldiers in other species)

(2 and 3 are a bit more complicated but I'll leave it at that)

If you didn't know, leafcutter ants don't actually eat the leaves they harvest, rather they use them to feed a garden of Leucoagaricus gongylophorus (lol T_T), a type of fungus which they can eat. It's ant agriculture :P

THE ECOSYSTEM:

A very large tropical-subtropical region has suffered a severe wildfire, killing most plant and animal life. Despite the lack of plants, the fungal and animal aspects of the ecosystem is thriving due to the high amount of dead biomatter to support detritivores and thereby many predators. Unique vegetal life is also beginning to develop due to the rich topsoil and humid environment. There happens to only be one colony of Acromyrmex ants left.

THE COLONY:

Before the wildfire, vestigial genes of the queen's gamergates were passed onto workers, allowing them to reproduce. The queen and many of the workers ended up dying. Soon after, it was meant to be mating flight for the male ants, but since there were no other Acromyrmex queens in the region, it was instead forced to happen intracolonially. The hybridization evolved into new males having longer lifespans, being able to be workers, and also becoming diploid. This led to more genetic variety in the colony, which combined with the pressures of lower amounts of food for the fungus and higher amounts of predators, led to noticeable evolutionary changes occurring much quicker.

(i had to separate this from THE COLONY since it was getting too long lol)

(> means the change is because of the last one to have 1 less > btw)

EVOLUTIONARY CHANGES:

1. Sentience

2. >Complex Personal Communication (via Stridulation, vibrations made with the gaster and a "scraper")

3. > >Ears (for hearing airborne stridulating; this is also related to 6)

4. > >No more pheromonal communication

5. > > >Hydrocarbons (chemicals on antenna for info about the ant) can now be finely controlled

6. Thicker, more covering cuticles (exoskeletons)

7. Bipedalism

8. > Thicker hind legs

6, 7, (DONT YOU DARE) and 8 evolved because with less specialized minima for protecting against harmful bacteria and parasites, ants transporting their leaves need to be able to protect them by themselves. The way they achieve this is by being able to walk on two legs so that they have free arms to protect the leaf, as well as a stronger cuticle to protect against parasites and predators.

That's all so far! Expect some more fun stuff like the ants' language (btw i'm coining the term myrmophonetics for ant stridulation phonetics) and maybe even the specific characters and stories in the tribe! I'm also gonna keep evolving it past the first tribe :]

Btw. in the future, I'll refer to this project as a "simulation" of the ant species

Happy pixelling bye bye :3

(sry for randomly reposting i just want people to actually see this cuz i worked really hard on it mwerp)