Abstract
The discovery of numerousPyramica ohioensisandP. rostratacolonies living in acorns, as well as the efficient recovery of colonies from artificial nests placed in suitable habitats, opens a new stage in the study of North American dacetine ants. Here we present detailed information, based on 42 nest collections, on the colony structure of these two species.P. ohioensiscolonies are smaller than those ofP. rostrata. Both species are polygynous, but nests ofP. ohioensiscontain fewer dealate queens than those ofP. rostrata. This is the first report of multiple collections ofPyramicacolonies nesting in fallen acorns, and of the use of artificial nesting cavities to sample for dacetines in the soil and leaf litter. We describe an artificial cavity nest design that may prove useful in future investigations.
Highlights
The ants of the genus Pyramica are distributed worldwide and are diverse and abundant in both warm temperate and tropical forest communities (Bolton lists 350 valid species) [1]
Pyramica species are widely known as specialist predators of Collembola [3, 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16], little is known about other aspects of their biology
Five different species of ants were recovered from the artificial nests
Summary
The ants of the genus Pyramica are distributed worldwide and are diverse and abundant in both warm temperate and tropical forest communities (Bolton lists 350 valid species) [1]. Pyramica species are widely known as specialist predators of Collembola [3, 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16], little is known about other aspects of their biology. These diminutive, cryptobiotic ants forage in leaf litter and rotten wood and are most frequently collected by litter sifting, Berlese funnel extraction, or Winkler samples. Collections of colonies are comparatively infrequent and our understanding of Pyramica colony demographics and life histories is limited
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