van Wilgenburg Ellen, Mariotta Mario, Tsutsui Neil Durie
Department of Natural Sciences, Fordham University, New York, NY 10023, USA.
Independent Researcher, Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA.
Insects. 2022 Mar 29;13(4):335. doi: 10.3390/insects13040335.
Ants are some of the most abundant and ecologically successful terrestrial organisms, and invasive ants rank among the most damaging invasive species. The Argentine ant is a particularly well-studied invader, in part, because of the extreme social structure, known as , that occurs in introduced populations. Unicoloniality is characterized by the formation of geographically vast supercolonies, within which territorial behavior and intraspecific aggression are absent. Although there is considerable evidence supporting a genetic basis for the odor cues involved in colony recognition, some studies have suggested that diet may also influence colony recognition cues and, thus, colony structure. Here, we test the role for insect-derived recognition cues by performing a diet supplementation experiment in a natural field setting, and a more extreme dietary manipulation experiment in the lab. After one month, in both the field and the lab, we found that aggressive supercolonies remained aggressive toward each other and non-aggressive nests (from the same supercolony) remained non-aggressive, regardless of dietary treatment. In one lab treatment, we did observe a significant decrease in the level of aggression between different supercolonies that were fed the same diet, but aggression was still frequent. We did not see any evidence for cuticular hydrocarbon odor cues being transferred from prey to ants in any of the field treatments. In the more extreme lab treatment, however, several cuticular hydrocarbons were acquired from both roach and cricket insect prey (but not ). Based on these data, we conclude that dietary changes are unlikely to underlie changes in behavior or colony structure in Argentine ants in real-world settings. However, these results indicate that caution is warranted when interpreting the behaviors of animals that have been reared on diets that are substantially different from natural populations.
蚂蚁是地球上数量最为丰富且生态上极为成功的陆生生物之一，而入侵蚂蚁则位列最具破坏力的入侵物种之中。阿根廷蚁是一种经过特别深入研究的入侵者，部分原因在于其引入种群中存在一种极端的社会结构，即单殖性。单殖性的特征是形成地理范围广阔的超级蚁群，在这些蚁群中不存在领地行为和种内攻击行为。尽管有大量证据支持群体识别中涉及的气味线索存在遗传基础，但一些研究表明饮食也可能影响群体识别线索，进而影响群体结构。在此，我们通过在自然野外环境中进行饮食补充实验以及在实验室中进行更极端的饮食操控实验，来测试昆虫来源的识别线索所起的作用。一个月后，无论是在野外还是实验室，我们发现攻击性的超级蚁群彼此之间仍然具有攻击性，而非攻击性巢穴（来自同一个超级蚁群）仍然没有攻击性，无论饮食处理如何。在一项实验室处理中，我们确实观察到喂食相同饮食的不同超级蚁群之间的攻击水平显著下降，但攻击行为仍然频繁发生。在任何野外处理中，我们都没有发现表皮碳氢化合物气味线索从猎物转移到蚂蚁身上的证据。然而，在更极端的实验室处理中，从蟑螂和蟋蟀昆虫猎物身上都获取到了几种表皮碳氢化合物（但不是 ）。基于这些数据，我们得出结论，在现实环境中，饮食变化不太可能是阿根廷蚁行为或群体结构变化的基础。然而，这些结果表明，在解释以与自然种群有很大差异的饮食饲养的动物的行为时，需要谨慎对待。
