0000000001316989
AUTHOR
Sylwester Job
showing 3 related works from this author
Collective defence portfolios of ant hosts shift with social parasite pressure
2014
Host defences become increasingly costly as parasites breach successive lines of defence. Because selection favours hosts that successfully resist parasitism at the lowest possible cost, escalating coevolutionary arms races are likely to drive host defence portfolios towards ever more expensive strategies. We investigated the interplay between host defence portfolios and social parasite pressure by comparing 17 populations of two Temnothorax ant species. When successful, collective aggression not only prevents parasitation but also spares host colonies the cost of searching for and moving to a new nest site. However, once parasites breach the host's nest defence, host colonies should resor…
Geographic Variation in Social Parasite Pressure Predicts Intraspecific but not Interspecific Aggressive Responses in Hosts of a Slavemaking Ant
2015
Variation in community composition over a species' geographic range leads to divergent selection pressures, resulting in interpopulation variation in trait expression. One of the most pervasive selective forces stems from antagonists such as parasites. Whereas hosts of microparasites developed sophisticated immune systems, social parasites select for behavioural host defences. Here, we investigated the link between parasite pressure exerted by the socially parasitic slavemaking ant Protomognathus americanus and colony-level aggression in Temnothorax ants from 17 populations. We studied almost the entire geographic range of two host species, including unparasitized populations. As previous s…
Data from: Collective defence portfolios of ant hosts shift with social parasite pressure
2014
Host defences become increasingly costly as parasites breach successive lines of defence. Because selection favours hosts that successfully resist parasitism at the lowest possible cost, escalating coevolutionary arms races are likely to drive host defence portfolios towards ever more expensive strategies. We investigated the interplay between host defence portfolios and social parasite pressure by comparing 17 populations of two Temnothorax ant species. When successful, collective aggression not only prevents parasitation but also spares host colonies the cost of searching for and moving to a new nest site. However, once parasites breach the host's nest defence, host colonies should resort…