Can wood ants distinguish between good and bad food patches on the forest floor?

Abstract

Wood ants ( Formica rufa group) normally feed on secretions of aphids to obtain carbohydrates, and on free-living invertebrates to obtain proteins. The availability of protein resources is usually unpredictable, and the demand for proteins is high during the period when ant larvae are developing. Thus, ants should select high quality food patches, i.e. patches with plenty of prey, when these are available. Foraging on the forest floor is seldom observed, but should be an alternative behaviour during periods of scarce food supply in the trees. To study the hunting behaviour of wood ants on soil invertebrates, ants were offered fly larvae (maggots) in two different quantities (six or two per pah) at two distances from an ant trail. Maggots exposed on the forest floor were found by randomly patrolling ant scouts regardless of bait quality. However, scouts that found the baits with six larvae recruited workers faster and, on average, four times as many workers were recruited to the six-larvae bait than to the bait with only two larvae. This indicates that ants can distinguish between poor and rich patches and that they are able to use this information to recruit more workers. Also, more workers were recruited and more maggots were carried away from patches nearby trails than from those far away. The results indicate that, during the warm season, ants explore and exhibit adaptive ‘foraging behaviour’ on the forest floor in the whole territory, not only close to trails. Consequently, wood ant feeding on soil invertebrates may be a common way for obtaining a large amounts of protein.