Microclimatic Conditions Regulate Surface Activity in Harvester Ants Messor barbarus

Azcárate, Francisco M.; Kovács, Éva; Peco, Begoña

doi:10.1007/s10905-007-9074-3

Cited by 66 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Many factors affect foraging rate at any time, such as temperature [31] and the vegetation ants have to travel through to reach the food [48], while other processes such as predation [49] and amount of stored food [50], probably influence whether a colony forages at all on a given day. Colonies compete with neighbors for foraging area, and colony decisions about interactions with the foragers of neighboring colonies depend on the ages of the colonies involved [32], [51]–[52], so foraging activity also depends on a colony’s age and the age distribution of neighboring colonies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Harvester Ant Colony Variation in Foraging Activity and Response to Humidity

2013

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Collective behavior is produced by interactions among individuals. Differences among groups in individual response to interactions can lead to ecologically important variation among groups in collective behavior. Here we examine variation among colonies in the foraging behavior of the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus. Previous work shows how colonies regulate foraging in response to food availability and desiccation costs: the rate at which outgoing foragers leave the nest depends on the rate at which foragers return with food. To examine how colonies vary in response to humidity and in foraging rate, we performed field experiments that manipulated forager return rate in 94 trials with 17 colonies over 3 years. We found that the effect of returning foragers on the rate of outgoing foragers increases with humidity. There are consistent differences among colonies in foraging activity that persist from year to year.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many harvester ant species, foraging behavior is influenced by the weather [30]–[31]. For example, in the ant Messor andrei , recruitment to food bait is higher in more humid conditions [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harvester Ant Colony Variation in Foraging Activity and Response to Humidity

2013

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“…v www.esajournals.org climatic patterns are unlikely to provide accurate assessments of short-term, small-scale changes in temperature, which ultimately regulates local ant abundance, richness, and foraging activities (Wehner et al 1992, Cerdá et al 1997, Azcarate et al 2007, Chong and Lee 2009. Furthermore, few studies have experimentally demonstrated the effects of warming on communities simultaneously at different locales (but see Doak and Morris 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of short-term warming on low and high latitude forest ant communities

et al. 2011

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Abstract. Climatic change is expected to have differential effects on ecological communities in different geographic areas. However, few studies have experimentally demonstrated the effects of warming on communities simultaneously at different locales. We manipulated air temperature with in situ passive warming and cooling chambers and quantified effects of temperature on ant abundance, diversity, and foraging activities (predation, scavenging, seed dispersal, nectivory, granivory) in two deciduous forests at 358 and 438 N latitude in the eastern U.S. In the southern site, the most abundant species, Crematogaster lineolata, increased while species evenness, most ant foraging activities, and abundance of several other ant species declined with increasing temperature. In the northern site, species evenness was highest at intermediate temperatures, but no other metrics of diversity or foraging activity changed with temperature. Regardless of temperature, ant abundance and foraging activities at the northern site were several orders of magnitude lower than those in the southern site.

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“…How does this harvesting affect the seeds in the dung? Ant activity in the area will be mainly driven by environmental conditions (Azcárate et al 2007) and less by food availability. A parallel study checking for seed content in feces shows that local sheep endozoochory is generating a dispersal shadow for seeds from 85 herb species (Manzano and Malo unpubl.).…”

Section: Results Of the Experimental Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Are ecologists blind to small things? The missed stories on non-tropical seed predation on feces

Manzano

Azcárate

Peco

et al. 2010

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Seed dispersal involves several complex stages that can be affected by multiple peripheral processes. Thus, a major dispersal event can be followed by secondary dispersal, which can reduce density‐dependent mortality and consolidate the dispersal phase. But predation events can also follow, and predation of seeds in feces is particularly interesting because it can heavily alter the fate of seeds dispersed through vertebrate guts. Our review of 20 cases involving this kind of interaction found that research has chiefly been in tropical and subtropical areas (85% of cases), suggesting that it is a minor phenomenon at higher latitudes. However, the small size of both the seeds and predators involved may have caused this process to go unnoticed outside the tropics. We tested the presence of predation of seeds in feces at a temperate, semi‐arid and small‐seed dominated ecosystem and found that it can be as important as in tropical latitudes, affecting up to 80% of feces in mid‐summer. Moreover, it may influence endozoochory in a way whose significance could have been strongly underestimated, as it affects 35% of the seeds dispersed by sheep during the year. Our results may encourage scientists to pay attention to other interactions that may be widespread globally but go unnoticed. The study of seed dispersal, especially, may be suffering from the researchers’ difficulty in handling processes that are difficult to observe because of the small size of the organisms involved.

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Microclimatic Conditions Regulate Surface Activity in Harvester Ants Messor barbarus

Cited by 66 publications

References 48 publications

Harvester Ant Colony Variation in Foraging Activity and Response to Humidity

Harvester Ant Colony Variation in Foraging Activity and Response to Humidity

Effects of short-term warming on low and high latitude forest ant communities

Are ecologists blind to small things? The missed stories on non-tropical seed predation on feces

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