Journal ArticleDOI
Fire ant thermal preferences: behavioral control of growth and metabolism
TLDR
Thermal preferences of well-fed and food-limited fire ant colonies (Solenopsis invicta) were studied in relation to colony growth and metabolic costs, and thermal preferences for brood in food-Limited colonies did not match the food- limited growth curve.Abstract:
Thermal preferences of well-fed and food-limited fire ant colonies (Solenopsis invicta) were studied in relation to colony growth and metabolic costs. The growth curve for well-fed colonies was strongly skewed toward warmer temperatures with maximal growth occurring near 32° C (Fig. 2A). The growth curve for food-limited colonies was skewed toward cooler temperatures with maximal colony size occurring around 25° C (Fig. 2B). Food-limited colonies apparently grew larger at cooler temperatures because metabolic costs of workers were reduced. A series of binary choice tests confirmed three predictions concerning fire ant thermal preferences (Figs. 3–4). First, well-fed colonies preferred brood temperatures very near the optimum for colony growth (31° C versus 32° C). Colonies were also able to select appropriate suboptimal growth temperatures when the optimal range was unavailable. Secondly, as predicted, a large percentage of colony workers (∼ 30% in well-fed colonies) consistently chose cooler temperatures than those selected for the brood. This strategy probably increases longevity of workers not directly associated with brood care. Thirdly, food-limited colonies preferred cooler temperatures than well-fed colonies. Metabolic costs of food-limited colonies were reduced by approximately 7% because of (1) slightly cooler brood temperatures (30° C versus 31° C) and because (2) an additional 20–30% of the workers selected cooler temperatures. The addition of excess food reversed food-limited thermal preferences within 12 h for the brood (Fig. 5) and several days for the workers. Contrary to expectations, thermal preferences for brood in food-limited colonies did not match the food-limited growth curve, perhaps because fire ant colonies can choose to rear brood at warm temperatures while maintaining accumulated colony biomass at cooler temperatures.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Sociometry and Sociogenesis of Colonies of the Fire Ant Solenopsis Invicta During One Annual Cycle
TL;DR: Fire ant colonies reached their annual maximum population size in midwinter and their maximum biomass in spring and declined to a midsummer minimum, showing that the transition from the ergonomic to the reproductive stages is sharp, and that colonies must grow in order to produce more sexuals.
Journal ArticleDOI
Behavioural effects of temperature on ectothermic animals: unifying thermal physiology and behavioural plasticity.
TL;DR: A unified framework that should apply to all ectothermic animals is proposed, generalizing temperature's behavioural effects into kinetic effects and integrated effects, and the difficulty in distinguishing adaptive behavioural changes from constraints when observing animals' behavioural responses to temperature is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Potential Global Range Expansion of the Invasive Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta
TL;DR: A dynamic, ecophysiological model of colony growth is used to predict the potential global range expansion of this invasive species, S. invicta, which has diverse detrimental impacts on recipient communities and has the potential to colonize numerous other regions.
Journal ArticleDOI
The trade‐off between thermal tolerance and behavioural dominance in a subtropical South American ant community
TL;DR: There is a general trade-off between behavioural dominance and thermal tolerance in ants, which creates a linear relationship between temperature use and dominance for ants up to ≈ 35 °C, but extremely high temperatures may also be stressful such that the full relationship is actually unimodal.
Journal ArticleDOI
Who likes it hot? A global analysis of the climatic, ecological, and evolutionary determinants of warming tolerance in ants
Sarah E. Diamond,Sarah E. Diamond,D. Magdalena Sorger,D. Magdalena Sorger,Jiri Hulcr,Jiri Hulcr,Shannon L. Pelini,Israel Del Toro,Christopher Hirsch,E. W. Oberg,Robert R. Dunn,Robert R. Dunn +11 more
TL;DR: It is found that ants that live in the canopies of hot, tropical forest are the most at risk, globally, from climate warming, where many, perhaps most, ant and other species on Earth live.
References
More filters
Book
The Biology of the Honey Bee
TL;DR: This book describes the life cycle of a honey bee, focusing on the courtship and mating activities of Worker Bees and their role in the evolution of monogamy.
Journal ArticleDOI
Energetic Responses of Salmon to Temperature. A Study of Some Thermal Relations in the Physiology and Freshwater Ecology of Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerkd)
TL;DR: It is concluded that a mechanism of behavioral thermoregulation has evolved which favorably balances daily metabolic expenditures in order to conserve energy when food is limited.
Book
The orientation of animals
TL;DR: Professor Szent-Gyorgyi, the Nobel laureate, has played a distinguished part in the development of the present knowledge of cellular oxidation, and his complete grasp of the subject has enabled him to provide in a recent series of lectures a clear and accurate account of the fundamental principles in terms that can be understood by anyone who has even an elementary knowledge of biochemistry.
Journal ArticleDOI
Caste and division of labor in leaf-cutter ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Atta). II. The ergonomic optimization of leaf cutting.
TL;DR: In the activity of leaf cutting, A. sexdens can be said to be not only at an adaptive optimum but also, within at most a relatively narrow margin of error, to have been optimized in the course of evolution.