Quantifying the effect of colony size and food distribution on harvester ant foraging

PLoS ONE

Volumn 7, Issue 7, 2012, Pages

  Flanagan, Tatiana P ^a,b   Letendre, Kenneth ^a,b   Burnside, William R ^a   Fricke, G Matthew ^b   Moses, Melanie E ^a,b,c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO   (United States)

^b University of New Mexico   (United States)

^c SANTA FE INSTITUTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANIMAL EXPERIMENT; ANT; ARTICLE; FORAGER; FORAGING BEHAVIOR; NONHUMAN; ORGANISM COLONY; PLANT SEED; POGONOMYRMEX; POPULATION SIZE; SPECIES DIFFERENCE;

ANIMALS; ANTS; APPETITIVE BEHAVIOR; ENVIRONMENT; FEEDING BEHAVIOR; MODELS, BIOLOGICAL; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SPATIAL ANALYSIS;

FORMICIDAE; HEXAPODA; POGONOMYRMEX;

EID: 84863676476     PISSN: None     EISSN: 19326203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0039427     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Stephens DW, Brown JS, Ydenberg RC, editors (2007) Foraging: behavior and ecology. 608 p.
2. Stephens DW, Krebs JR, (1986) Foraging theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3. Beckers R, Goss S, Deneubourg JL, Pasteels JM, (1989) Colony size, communication, and ant foraging strategy. Psyche 96: 239-256.
4. Caraco T, Wolf LL, (1975) Ecological determinants of group sizes of foraging lions. American Naturalist 109: 343-352.
5. Hill K, Kaplan H, Hawkes K, Hurtado AM, (1987) Foraging decisions among Ache hunter-gatherers: new data and implications for optimal foraging models. Ethology and Sociobiology 8: 1-36.
6. Ryer C, Olla B, (1995) Influences of food distribution on fish foraging behaviour. Animal Behaviour 49: 411-418.
7. Hobbs RJ, (1985) Harvester ant foraging and plant species distribution in annual grassland. Oecologia 67: 519-523.
8. Gordon DM, (1991) Behavioral flexibility and the foraging ecology of seed-eating ants. American Naturalist 138: 379-411.
9. Anderson C, McShea DW, (2001) Individual versus social complexity, with particular reference to ant colonies. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 76: 211-237.
10. Wilby A, Shachak M, (2000) Harvester ant response to spatial and temporal heterogeneity in seed availability: pattern in the process of granivory. Oecologia 125: 495-503.
11. Crist TO, MacMahon JA, (1992) Harvester ant foraging and shrub-steppe seeds: interactions of seed resources and seed use. Ecology 73: 1768-1779.
12. Davidson DW, (1977) Foraging ecology and community organization in desert seed-eating ants. Ecology 58: 725-737.
13. Kunin WE, (1994) Density-dependent foraging in the harvester ant Messor ebeninus: two experiments. Oecologia 98: 328-335.
14. Bernstein RA, (1975) Foraging strategies of ants in response to variable food density. Ecology 56: 213-219.
15. Mehlop P, Scott Jr NJ, (1983) Temporal patterns of seed use and availability in a guild of desert ants. Ecological Entomology 8: 69-85.
16. Abramsky Z, (1983) Experiments on seed predation by rodents and ants in the Israeli desert. Oecologia 57: 328-332.
17. Denny AJ, Wright J, Grief B, (2001) Foraging efficiency in the wood ant, Formica rufa: is time of the essence in trail following? Animal Behaviour 62: 139-146.
18. Aron S, Pasteels JMM, Deneubourg JLL, (1989) Trail laying behavior during exploratory recruitment in the Argentine Ant, Iridomyrmex humile (mayr). Biology of Behaviour 14: 207-217.
19. Wilson EO, Osborne E, (1971) The insect societies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 562 p.
20. Crist TO, MacMahon JA, (1991) Foraging patterns of Pogonomyrmex occidentalis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in a shrubsteppe ecosystem: the roles of temperature, trunk trails, and seed resources. Environmental Entomology 20: 265-275.
21. Mull JF, MacMahon JA, (1997) Spatial variation in rates of seed removal by harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex occidentalis) in a shrub-steppe ecosystem. American Midland Naturalist 138: 1-13.
22. Holldobler B, (1976) Recruitment behavior, home range orientation and territoriality in harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 1: 3-44.
23. Reichman OJ, (1984) Spatial and temporal variation of seed distributions in Sonoran Desert soils. Journal of Biogeography 11: 1-11.
24. Edelman A, (2010) Dispersal, facilitation, and burrow architecture in banner-tailed kangaroo rats. PhD Dissertation. Department of Biology. University of New Mexico.
25. Anderson C, Franks NR, (2001) Teams in animal societies. Behavioral Ecology 12: 534.
26. Sumpter DJT, (2006) The principles of collective animal behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B Biological Sciences 361: 5-22.
27. Johnson RA, (2000) Seed-harvester ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of North America: an overview of ecology and biogeography. Sociobiology 36: 89-122.
28. Whitford WG, Ettershank G, (1975) Factors affecting foraging activity in Chihuahuan desert harvester ants. Environmental Entomology 4: 689-696.
29. Cole AC, (1968) Pogonomyrmex harvester ants: a study of the genus in North America. Knoxville, TN. University of Tennessee Press. 222 p.
30. Holldobler B, Wilson EO, (1970) Recruitment trails in the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius. Psyche 77: 385-399.
31. Traniello JFA, (1989) Foraging strategies of ants. Annual Review of Entomology 34: 191-210.
32. Whitford WG, (1978) Foraging in Seed-Harvester Ants Pogonomyrmex spp. Ecology 59: 185-189.
33. Schafer RJ, Holmes S, Gordon DM, (2006) Forager activation and food availability in harvester ants. Animal Behaviour 71: 815-822.
34. Rosengren R, Fortelius W, (1986) Ortstreue in foraging ants of the Formica rufa group - hierarchy of orienting cues and long-term memory. Insectes Sociaux 33: 306-337.
35. Fresneau D, (1985) Individual foraging and path fidelity in a ponerine ant. Insectes Sociaux 32: 109-116.
36. Beverly BD, McLendon H, Nacu S, Holmes S, Gordon DM, (2009) How site fidelity leads to individual differences in the foraging activity of harvester ants. Behavioral Ecology 20: 633-638.
37. Fewell JH, (1990) Directional fidelity as a foraging constraint in the western harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis. Oecologia 82: 45-51.
38. Moses ME, (2005) Metabolic scaling, from insects to societies. Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico.
39. Fewell JH, (1988) Energetic and time costs of foraging in harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 22: 401-408.
40. PASW Statistics. Rel 18.0.1. Chicago: SPSS Inc.
41. Taylor F, (1977) Foraging behavior of ants: experiments with two species of myrmecine ants. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 2: 147-167.
42. Buchkremer EM, Reinhold K, (2008) Sector fidelity- an advantageous foraging behavior resulting from a heuristic search strategy. Behavioral Ecology 19: 984-989.
43. Flanagan TP, Letendre K, Burnside W, Fricke GM, Moses M, (2011) How ants turn information into food. In: 2011 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life (ALIFE). Ieee. pp. pp. 178-185.
44. Hou C, Kaspari M, Vander Zanden H, Gillooly J, (2010) Energetic basis of colonial living in social insects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 3634-3638.
45. Deneubourg J-LL, Aron S, Goss S, Pasteels JM, (1990) The self-organizing exploratory pattern of the argentine ant. Journal of Insect Behavior 3: 159-168.