Finding its place in a competitive ant community: leaf fidelity of Camponotus sericeus

Abstract

Many species of ground nesting ants regularly visit extrafloral nectaries (EFNs) of the savannah tree Pseudocedrela kotschyi. The distribution of ants on the plants is mosaic-like, i. e. stable and predictable with different ant species dominating neighbouring trees. In order to examine whether foraging behaviour may influence the structure of these ant communities, we investigated individual foraging behaviour of Camponotus sericeus, the ant species with highest incidence on P. kotschyi trees in the study area. Foragers of C. sericeus continuously visited EFNs on the leafs of P. kotschyi during their diurnal activity period. Individually marked foragers showed a pronounced fidelity for individual plants and particular leaves. Ant individuals returned to the same plants over a three week period at least. They persistently focused foraging on the same leaves (about three per ant). Null model analysis of ant distribution revealed that ants partitioned their host plant. Co-occurrence on the same leaves was significantly lower than could be expected by chance for most trees studied. Foraging was not oriented towards the plants growing closest to the nest but more distantly growing plants were considerably used. Choice of plants could therefore be influenced by plant quality or by presence of other, competing ant species. The study is the first to show leaf fidelity caused by EFNs and micro-site fidelity within the context of species rich ant communities. It considers the resulting systematic, partitioned use of individual plants as important factor supporting the formation of a mosaic-like ant distribution on plants.

Natural history and foraging behavior of the carpenter ant Camponotus sericeiventris Guérin, 1838 (Formicinae, Campotonini) in the Brazilian tropical savanna

“…Camponotus can forage singly or in small groups, with recruitment system (C. gigas, Pfeiffer and Linsenmair 2000;C. pennsylvanicus, Cannon 1998) and fidelity to host trees (C. sericeus, Mody and Linsenmair 2003), corroborating with our results (see Table 5). Although C. sericeiventris colonies at our study site had shown a large overlapping in the foraging area, they did not demonstrate a conspicuous aggressive behavior between individuals of distinct colonies.…”

“…The foraging radius found to C. sericeiventris in our study is similar to C. sericeus, also studied in savannas, which the home range was at least 26 m around the nest (Mody and Linsenmair 2003). Camponotus can forage singly or in small groups, with recruitment system (C. gigas, Pfeiffer and Linsenmair 2000;C.…”

“…The absence of C. sericeiventris nests at mesophytic forest contradicts Machado and Freitas (2001). The mesophytic forest in the study area had similar physiognomic aspects with gallery forest including a moderate declivity in the ground; the medium height of this semi-deciduous forest is 20 m, presenting dense covering close to 100%, resulting in bad conditions to the establishment of a herbaceous-grass Mody and Linsenmair (2003) stratum (Schiavini and Araújo 1989). To the opposite, cerradão and gallery forest present a strong herbaceous stratum, contributing to C. sericeiventris foraging, besides other abiotic conditions as shade and humidity.…”

“…For example, C. sericeus can build a nest on the ground (Mody and Linsenmair 2003); C. senex, construct a silk nest in trees with dense copes (Santos 2002); C. mirabilis, inside bamboos stems (Davidson et al 2006), other ants can nest either in the ground or inside the wood, as C. pennsylvanicus (Cannon 1998), C. gigas (Pfeiffer and Linsenmair 2000), and finally nesting inside wood as C. herculeanus (Bowser 2002) and C. sericeiventris (see Table 5). The nidification in dead or live trunks and branches of trees corroborate the observations of other authors to C. sericeiventris in forests of Peru (Davidson et al 2003) and Costa Rica (Longino 2002).…”

Effects of ants on arthropod assemblages of a native timber tree in a tropical reforestation plantation

“…). The dominating ground‐nesting ants may systematically approach the tree crowns only in low numbers to search on the leaves for occasionally occurring arthropod prey and to regularly extract the extrafloral nectar (Mody and Linsenmair ).…”