Plant Selection and Foraging Patterns in Two Species of Leaf‐Cutting Ants (Atta)

Abstract

Three colonies each of two species of leaf—cutting ants (Atta colombica Guer. and Atta cephalotes L.) were studied for 1 yr in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica to determine the following: (1) Do colonies of Atta cut leaves from a limited number of species (i.e., are they selective)? (2) What determines which plant species are attacked? (3) Do leaf—cutters optimize foraging in terms of energy expended by attacking palatable plants closest to the nest or do they distribute their efforts more or less evenly throughout their foraging territory? Several line of evidence support the hypothesis that A. cephalotes and A. colombica are selective in terms of plant material attacked. The ants sampled a large majority of the plant species present, but concentrated their foraging on a restricted subset of species. The mature leaves of only 31.4% and 22.0% of the species present were readily acceptable to A. colombica and A. cephalotes, respectively. The new leaves of another 12—16 plant species were acceptable. Different colonies of the same Atta species consistently attacked the same plant species if they were available, cut leaves from the same species at similar rates, and even attacked the same species of plants at the same time of year. The amount of material cut from host plant species was not correlated with host plant abundance in four of the six colonies studied, and was even slightly negatively correlated in two of these four. An analysis of plant distance from the nest versus amount harvested shows that palatable plant species close to the nest have a greater probability of being visited by the ants, but do not necessarily suffer more defoliation than other such plants within 50—60 m of the nest. Amount harvested decreases greatly for plants farther than 60—80 m from the nest. Thus colonies of Atta do not normally concentrate their efforts on plants closest to the nest, but foraging cannot be described as evenly distributed either. The factor responsible for selectivity in colonies of Atta is probably the internal chemistry of the material selected. An Atta colony must provide the fungus garden when a proper balance of nutrients and moisture without overlapping it with secondary compounds from the plants selected. The ants' attempt to solve this problem may explain some of the complexities of leaf—cutter foraging behavior.