Search results for "Behavioral strategy"

Differential Response of Ant Colonies to Intruders: Attack Strategies Correlate With Potential Threat

2011

Animals are often threatened by predators, parasites, or competitors, and attacks against these enemies are a common response, which can help to remove the danger. The costs of defense are complex and involve the risk of injury, the loss of energy ⁄time, and the erroneous identification of a friend as a foe. Our goal was to study the specificity of defense strategies. We analyzed the aggressive responses of ant colonies by confronting them with workers of an unfamiliar congeneric species, a non-nestmate conspecific, a co-occurring congeneric competitor species, and a social parasite—a slave-making ant. As expected, the latter species, which can inflict dramatic fitness losses to the colony,…