Ord Terry J, Blazek Katrina
Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, and the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Kensington NSW 2052, Australia.
School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Kensington NSW 2052, Australia.
Behav Ecol. 2025 May 29;36(4):araf062. doi: 10.1093/beheco/araf062. eCollection 2025 Jul-Aug.
Shelter provided by a fixed refuge like a burrow or nest has obvious advantages for central place foragers: the energy and time required to construct the refuge is expected to be offset by improvements in survival and reproduction. This assumes the refuge is positioned appropriately in the environment to access food and other resources, and that the environment itself remains stable over time. We investigated the long-term liability of refuge placement and adverse environmental change on an iconic central place forager, the Australian meat ant (). We measured the consequences of nest location on the thermal conditions experienced at the nest and how those conditions influenced the opportunity to forage and defend the nest from predation. These data were combined with direct field observations of foraging effort and changes in nest size obtained from over a decade of study. Getting the location of a nest wrong had a lasting impact on the growth of a nest and colonies were unable to compensate for subsequent time restrictions on activity through changes in behavior. Our data suggests that central place foragers relying on the long-term occupancy of a fixed refuge are especially vulnerable to environmental change. Unless these species compensate through changes in behavior or construct a new central refuge in an area outside of the zone of impact, the increasing frequency and severity of environmental change occurring with the climate crisis could increase the risk of local extinction.
建造避难所所需的能量和时间预计会因生存和繁殖能力的提高而得到补偿。这假定避难所在环境中的位置合适，能够获取食物和其他资源，并且环境本身随时间保持稳定。我们研究了避难所位置的长期影响以及不利的环境变化对标志性的中心地觅食者——澳大利亚食肉蚁的影响。我们测量了巢穴位置对巢穴所经历的热条件的影响，以及这些条件如何影响觅食机会和保护巢穴免受捕食的能力。这些数据与十多年研究中获得的觅食努力的直接野外观察结果以及巢穴大小的变化相结合。选错巢穴位置对巢穴的生长产生了持久影响，蚁群无法通过行为变化来弥补随后活动时间的限制。我们的数据表明，依赖固定避难所长期居住的中心地觅食者特别容易受到环境变化的影响。除非这些物种通过行为变化进行补偿，或者在影响区域之外的地方建造一个新的中心避难所，否则随着气候危机而来的环境变化频率和严重性不断增加，可能会增加当地灭绝的风险。
