Ant Ecology

Ants Can Identify A Nestmate Or An Alien In The Nest

Ant colonies are typically founded by one or a few queens. These queens produce all of the worker ants. Workers are responsible for finding food, caring for immature ants, and defending the nest. Ant ecology is greatly influenced by competition; in fact, it is perhaps the primary force determining colony size and organization. Given such competition, ants must be able to discriminate between members of their own colony (i.e., nestmates) and members from other colonies (i.e., non-nestmates). This ability to recognize nestmates--as opposed to aliens--is primarily mediated through chemical signals.

Ants, in general, have attained considerable ecological dominance. Their diversity results, for the most part, from efficient social organization and the ability to communicate effectively (H�lldobler 19-21). Ant colonies are functionally divided into reproductive and sterile castes. Moreover, there is cooperation in rearing the young, gathering food, defending the nest, and exploring new foraging grounds. For example, ants that have located food are able to initiate a mass recruitment of nestmates. In addition, "army ants" (i.e. members of the subfamilies Aenictinae, Dorylinae, and Ecitoninae) mobilize large numbers of workers and search for prey (Ward 319). Such abilities require highly developed communication systems (Franks 139).

Ant societies are regulated by the "pre

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ain the cross-specific responses observed in A. albisetosus (H�lldobler 19-22). In addition to pheromone blends derived from a single exocrine gland, multicomponent chemical signals are also secreted by multiple sources. While such substances generally serve the same overall function, the exact roles of each chemical may be somewhat different. For example, with the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius, the recruitment pheromone comes from the poison gland and the homing pheromone is secreted by the Dufour's gland. Similarly, ants of the genus Myrmica secrete anonymous recruitment signals from their poison gland, and species-specific homing hydrocarbons from their Dufour's glands (H�lldobler 19-21). The purpose of this study is to show that ants do in fact use chemical signals to distinguish between nestmates and aliens. Obin (1986; 1987) suggests that Solenopsis invicta workers discriminate nestmates from non-nestmates by matching the phenotypic "recognition labels" of encountered individuals with their own "template" of learned, nestmate-borne, or self-borne cues (Obin & Meer 1361-1368). Moreover, this hypothesis is supported by evidence obtained for other social insects (reviews in Gadagkar 1985; Breed & Bennett 1987) (Obin

Category: Science - A