Food availability and brood number do not influence intraspecific aggression in Argentine ants

Abstract

Nestmate recognition cues can derive from both environmental and genetic factors, but can also be modulated in response to context-specific cues. Synchronous changes in nestmate recognition systems occur seasonally in some species of ants, however the mechanisms underlying these seasonal changes are often unknown. We studied two mechanisms, relative brood number and food availability, to determine if they generate temporal variation in intraspecific aggression in an introduced population of the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile. Using data from previous studies we found that seasonal increases in aggression levels correlate with seasonal increases in brood-to-worker ratios in the field. However, when we manipulated brood-to-worker ratios in paired experimental colonies, we found no direct evidence that relative brood numbers influenced aggression levels. To determine if food availability influenced aggression we conducted a second experiment in which we randomly assigned pairs of experimental colonies to starved or fed treatments and then measured aggression levels weekly for five weeks. We observed no difference in the level of aggression between these two treatment groups indicating that food availability also has no affect on aggression levels between hostile conspecific colonies.