Abstract
The ant subfamily Dorylinae contains the true army ant genera, the species of which are dominant predators, as well as non-army ants. Some of the non-army ant genera are closely related to true army ants, so they could be an important key in understanding the evolution of the army ant adaptive syndrome. Nevertheless, there has been little field research on the non-army ant doryline species because many of them are very rare. Cerapachys is one of the genera closely related to the Old-World army ants. We found some species of Cerapachys are commonly distributed in northern Thailand, so we investigated the daily and seasonal foraging activities of a non-army doryline ant of Cerapachys sulcinodis species complex in the seasonal tropical area of northern Thailand. Workers of the C. sulcinodis complex were diurnal and actively foraged during the rainy season, and their reproduction and foraging activity paused during the dry season. This report is the first on the foraging activity of non-army doryline ants under field conditions.
Highlights
The true army ants, consisting of eight genera in the subfamily Dorylinae, are known to exhibit several specific biological characters such as large colony size, group predation with several workers, nomadism, and permanently wingless queens, which together form the army ant adaptive syndrome (Gotwald, 1995; Kronauer, 2009)
We present a report on the field observations of the daily and seasonal foraging activity of a species belonging to the C. sulcinodis species complex in a seasonal tropical region in northern Thailand
The study field in Omkoi National Forest is located in the seasonal tropical mountainous region, where there is a strong dry season
Summary
The true army ants, consisting of eight genera in the subfamily Dorylinae, are known to exhibit several specific biological characters such as large colony size, group predation with several workers, nomadism, and permanently wingless queens, which together form the army ant adaptive syndrome (Gotwald, 1995; Kronauer, 2009). This subfamily contains “non-army ant” genera, which do not exhibit the army ant adaptive syndrome (Borowiec, 2016). There is almost no research on a comparative approach to the evolution of the army ant adaptive syndrome in this subfamily
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