Polydomy in the ant Ectatomma opaciventre

Abstract

Tropical ants commonly exhibit a hyper-dispersed pattern of spatial distribution of nests. In polydomous species, nests may be satellites, that is, secondary structures of the main nest, where the queen is found. In order to evaluate whether the ant Ectatomma opaciventre Roger (Formicidae: Ectatomminae) uses the strategy of building polydomous nests, the spatial distribution pattern of 33 nests in a 1,800 m 2 degraded area located in Rio Claro, SP, Brazil, were investigated using the nearest neighbor method. To complement the results of this investigation, the cuticular chemical profile of eight colonies was analyzed using Fourier transform infrared photoacoustic spectrosco-py (FTIR-PAS). The nests of E. opaciventre presented a hyper-dispersed or regular distribution, which is the most common in ants. The analysis of the cuticular hydrocarbons apparently con-firmed the hypothesis that this species is polydomous, since the chemical profiles of all studied colonies with nests at different sites were very similar to the chemical signature of the single found queen and were also different from those of colonies used as control.

Morphophysiological and cuticular chemical alterations caused byXenosentomophagus endoparasites in the social waspPolistes ferreri(Hymenoptera, Vespidae)

“…2014; Soares et al . 2014; Tofolo et al 2014; Santana et al 2015). The intensity values obtained at each wavenumber were used to construct the table used for discriminant analysis.…”

“…2012, 2013; Tofolo et al . 2014). The spectra for each sample were generated from 128 scans at resolution of 16 cm −1 .…”

“…Analyses of the cuticular chemical profiles were always performed using the thorax of the wasps, employing Fourier transform-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS). This technique has been extensively used in previous studies of biological materials (Charland and Leblanc, 1993;Gibbs, 1995;Andrade et al 2007;Antonialli-Junior et al 2007;Neves et al 2013;Tofolo et al 2014;Oliveira et al 2015;Santana et al 2015;Almeida et al 2016).…”

“…The thoraxes of the females were allowed to dry for 48 h under vacuum, in order to minimize the water content. They were then assessed using a spectrophotometer (Nexus 670, ThermoNicolet) coupled to a photoacoustic detector (MTEC-300), according to the methodology described in earlier studies (Antonialli-Junior et al 2007Neves et al 2012Neves et al , 2013Tofolo et al 2014). The spectra for each sample were generated from 128 scans at resolution of 16 cm −1 .…”

Biologia da nidificação e arquitetura de ninhos de formigas poneromorfas do Brasil

“…Neoponera goeldii também pode estruturar seus ninhos em polidomia, de acordo com as condições ambientais (DENIS et al, 2006). Segundo Tofolo et al (2014), E. opaciventre apresenta uma distribuição espacial de seus ninhos que pode explicar a fragmentação de suas colônias, permitindo assim reduzir a competição intra-específi ca.…”