Ecology and Environment Research Centre, Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 8;17(6):e0269517. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269517. eCollection 2022.
We investigate the impact of anthropogenic noise on the foraging efficiency of leafcutter ants (Acromyrmex octospinosus) in a controlled laboratory experiment. Anthropogenic noise is a widespread, pervasive and increasing environmental pollutant and its negative impacts on animal fitness and behaviour have been well documented. Much of this evidence has come from studies concerning vertebrate species with very little evidence for terrestrial invertebrates, especially social living invertebrates. We compare movement speed, forage fragment size, and colony activity levels of ants exposed to intermittent elevated noise and in ambient noise conditions. We use intermittent and temporally unpredictable bursts of white noise produced from a vibration speaker to create the elevated noise profile. Ant movement speed increased under elevated noise conditions when travelling to collect forage material and when returning to the colony nest. The size of individually measured foraged material was significantly reduced under elevated noise conditions. Colony activity, the number of ants moving along the forage route, was not affected by elevated noise and was consistent throughout the foraging events. Increased foraging speed and smaller forage fragments suggests that the ants had to make more foraging trips over an extended period, which is likely to affect energy expenditure and increases exposure to predators. This is likely to have significant fitness impacts for the colony over time.
我们在一项控制实验室实验中研究了人为噪声对切叶蚁（Acromyrmex octospinosus）觅食效率的影响。人为噪声是一种广泛存在、普遍存在且不断增加的环境污染物质，其对动物适应能力和行为的负面影响已得到充分证明。这些证据大多来自对脊椎动物物种的研究，而对陆地无脊椎动物，特别是社会性无脊椎动物的证据很少。我们比较了暴露于间歇性升高噪声和环境噪声条件下的蚂蚁的移动速度、觅食碎片大小和蚁群活动水平。我们使用来自振动扬声器的间歇性和时间上不可预测的白噪声爆发来产生升高的噪声轮廓。当蚂蚁前往收集食物材料和返回蚁巢时，它们在升高的噪声条件下的移动速度增加。在升高的噪声条件下，单独测量的觅食材料的大小明显减小。蚁群活动，即沿着觅食路线移动的蚂蚁数量，不受升高噪声的影响，并且在整个觅食事件中保持一致。觅食速度的加快和觅食碎片的减小表明，蚂蚁在较长时间内不得不进行更多的觅食旅行，这可能会影响能量消耗并增加暴露于捕食者的风险。这可能会随着时间的推移对蚁群的适应能力产生重大影响。
