Colony-colony interactions between highly invasive ants
Details
State: Public
Version: Final published version
License: All rights reserved
Serval ID
serval:BIB_6FEAF1C150E0
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Colony-colony interactions between highly invasive ants
Journal
Basic and Applied Ecology
ISSN
1618-0089
ISSN-L
1439-1791
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2016
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
17
Number
2
Pages
106-114
Language
english
Abstract
Among invasive species, ants are a particularly prominent group with enormous impacts on native biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Globalization and on-going climate change are likely to increase the rate of ant invasions in the future, leading to simultaneous introductions of several highly invasive species within the same area, Here, we investigate pairwise interactions among four highly invasive species, Linepithema humile,Lashis neglectus, Pheidole megacephala and Wasmannia auropunctata, at the whole colony level, using a laboratory set-up. :Each colony consisted of 300 workers and one queen. The number of surviving workers in the competing colonies was recorded daily over 7 weeks. We modelled the survival of each colony during pairwise colony interactions, using a nonlinear model characterizing the survival dynamics of each colony individually. The least dominant species was P. megacephala, which always went extinct. Interactions among the three other species showed more complex dynamics, rendering the outcome of the interactions less predictable. Overall, W auropunctata and L neglectus were the most dominant species. This study shows the importance of scaling up to the colony level in order to gain realism in predicting the outcome of multiple invasions.
Keywords
Biological invasions, Invasive ants, Colony behaviour, Interference competition, Colony survival, Linepithema humile, Lasius neglectus, Pheidole megacephala, Wasmannia auropunctata
Web of science
Create date
10/11/2015 17:06
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:28