Frizzi Filippo, Masoni Alberto, Santedicola Margherita, Servini Martina, Simoncini Nicola, Palmieri Jessica, Santini Giacomo
Department of Biology, University of Florence, Via Madonna del Piano 6, 50019 Florence, Italy.
Insects. 2022 Feb 14;13(2):198. doi: 10.3390/insects13020198.
Ants belonging to the group build large nest mounds, which aid their survival during severe winters. We investigated whether different environmental features of the habitats affected the nest mound shape and the population structure. We assessed the shape of all the nest mounds and mapped inter-nest trails connecting mounds for three imported populations of in three forest habitats: fir-dominated, beech-dominated, and a mixture of fir and beech. Single-nest mounds were averagely smaller and flatter in the beech-dominated forest, probably because of lighter building materials. Nonetheless, by summing the volumes of all interconnected nests, the size was similar among all three sites. In fir- and beech-dominated forests, large nests were also central in the networks, suggesting a central place foraging model with these nests as reference. We finally performed aggression tests, and found that aggressiveness was significantly higher among nests belonging to the same population than between populations. The results highlight the plasticity of the species to adapt nest and colony structure to different environments. Additionally, it appears that none of these populations is unicolonial, as observed in various alpine sites, there and the observed patterns of aggression are coherent with the 'nasty neighbor' effect.
属于该群体的蚂蚁会建造大型巢穴土堆，这有助于它们在严冬中生存。我们研究了栖息地的不同环境特征是否会影响巢穴土堆的形状和种群结构。我们评估了所有巢穴土堆的形状，并绘制了连接三个森林栖息地中三个外来种群巢穴的巢间路径图，这三个栖息地分别是以冷杉为主、以山毛榉为主以及冷杉和山毛榉混合的。在以山毛榉为主的森林中，单个巢穴土堆平均更小且更扁平，可能是因为建筑材料较轻。尽管如此，通过将所有相互连接的巢穴体积相加，三个地点的巢穴大小相似。在以冷杉和山毛榉为主的森林中，大型巢穴在网络中也处于中心位置，这表明以这些巢穴为参考的中心地觅食模型。我们最后进行了攻击测试，发现同一种群内的巢穴之间的攻击性明显高于不同种群之间的攻击性。结果突出了该物种使巢穴和群体结构适应不同环境的可塑性。此外，似乎这些种群中没有一个是单巢群的，正如在各个高山地区所观察到的那样，并且观察到的攻击模式与“恶劣邻居”效应一致。
