Habitat features and colony characteristics influencing ant personality and its fitness consequences

Abstract

Several factors can influence individual and group behavioral variation that can have important fitness consequences. In this study, we tested how two habitat types (seminatural meadows and meadows invaded by Solidago plants) and factors like colony and worker size and nest density influence behavioral (activity, meanderness, exploration, aggression, and nest displacement) variation on different levels of the social organization of Myrmica rubra ants and how these might affect the colony productivity. We assumed that the factors within the two habitat types exert different selective pressures on individual and colony behavioral variation that affects colony productivity. Our results showed individual-/colony-specific expression of both mean and residual behavioral variation of the studied behavioral traits. Although habitat type did not have any direct effect, habitat-dependent factors, like colony size and nest density influenced the individual mean and residual variation of several traits. We also found personality at the individual-level and at the colony level. Exploration positively influenced the total- and worker production in both habitats. Worker aggression influenced all the productivity parameters in seminatural meadows, whereas activity had a positive effect on the worker and total production in invaded meadows. Our results suggest that habitat type, through its environmental characteristics, can affect different behavioral traits both at the individual and colony level and that those with the strongest effect on colony productivity primarily shape the personality of individuals. Our results highlight the need for complex environmental manipulations to fully understand the effects shaping behavior and reproduction in colony-living species.

Inter-Parasitic Interactions in Myrmica Ants: Ectoparasitic Fungus Affecting the Success of Socially Parasitic Caterpillars

“…Between-colony differences in aggression and susceptibility to parasitism are also likely to be important, which may be linked to colony social structure 46 as well as to coevolutionary arms races between parasites and hosts 38 . We still do not know whether these effects are largely genetically or environmentally determined [47][48][49][50][51] , but in any case the large between-colony variation suggests that large numbers of colonies need to be sampled to examine the interactions between Myrmica ants and their parasites 21 .…”

Ectoparasitic fungi of Myrmica ants alter the success of parasitic butterflies

“…Between-colony differences in aggression and susceptibility to parasitism are also likely to be important, which may be linked to colony social structure 50 as well as to coevolutionary arms races between parasites and hosts 42 . We still do not know whether these effects are largely genetically or environmentally determined [51][52][53][54][55] , but in any case the large between-colony variation suggests that large numbers of colonies need to be sampled to examine the interactions between Myrmica ants and their parasites 25 .…”

Behavior of higher trophic levels associated with an invasive plant varies among populations

“…Understanding this mechanism would potentially shed some light on bottom-up and top-down interactions in biological invasions (McCary et al 2016). Indeed, perturbations in foraging traits, including foraging behavior, might appear because of invasive species (Brand et al 2021, Maak et al 2021).…”