Search results for "Black garden ant"
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Hierarchical networks of food exchange in the black garden ant Lasius niger
2020
In most eusocial insects, the division of labour results in relatively few individuals foraging for the entire colony. Thus, the survival of the colony depends on its efficiency in meeting the nutritional needs of all its members. Here, we characterise the network topology of a eusocial insect to understand the role and centrality of each caste in this network during the process of food dissemination. We constructed trophallaxis networks from 34 food-exchange experiments in black garden ants (Lasius niger). We tested the influence of brood and colony size on (i) global indices at the network level (i.e. efficiency, resilience, centralisation and modularity) and (ii) individual values (i.e. …
Non-consumptive effects between predators depend on the foraging mode of intraguild prey.
2020
Predator non-consumptive effects (NCE) are a suite of phenotypic responses of prey to avoid predation that cascade down food webs and can have a stronger impact than predation itself. However, the role of NCE in intraguild interactions remains understudied. Thus, multi-species experiments based on species traits are needed to improve our understanding of the impact of NCE on community structure. We investigated NCE of ants on 17 spider species as intraguild prey (8 cursorial and 9 sedentary) to test the influence of spider hunting mode on the strength of NCE. Sedentary spiders select a habitat patch and wait for prey, whereas cursorial spiders roam around searching for prey. Because activel…