Abstract
The foraging behavior of the arboreal turtle ant, Cephalotes goniodontus, was studied in the tropical dry forest of western Mexico. The ants collected mostly plant-derived food, including nectar and fluids collected from the edges of wounds on leaves, as well as caterpillar frass and lichen. Foraging trails are on small pieces of ephemeral vegetation, and persist in exactly the same place for 4–8 days, indicating that food sources may be used until they are depleted. The species is polydomous, occupying many nests which are abandoned cavities or ends of broken branches in dead wood. Foraging trails extend from trees with nests to trees with food sources. Observations of marked individuals show that each trail is travelled by a distinct group of foragers. This makes the entire foraging circuit more resilient if a path becomes impassable, since foraging in one trail can continue while a different group of ants forms a new trail. The colony’s trails move around the forest from month to month; from one year to the next, only one colony out of five was found in the same location. There is continual searching in the vicinity of trails: ants recruited to bait within 3 bifurcations of a main foraging trail within 4 hours. When bait was offered on one trail, to which ants recruited, foraging activity increased on a different trail, with no bait, connected to the same nest. This suggests that the allocation of foragers to different trails is regulated by interactions at the nest.
Highlights
An organism’s behavior determines its resource use and its ecology
This collective behavior determines how far the foragers travel from nests to collect food, how the colony finds new food sources, how often colonies shift foraging areas, and how ants are allocated to different trails to get the food back to the nest
To investigate how a colony of C. goniodontus adjusts its foraging trails, I asked: 1) How stable is a colony’s foraging area, from year to year, week to week and day to day? 2) When and on what spatial scale do colonies search for new food sources? 3) Does the allocation of foragers to a trail depend on local interactions near a food source, or is it regulated at the nest?
Summary
An organism’s behavior determines its resource use and its ecology. The foraging ecology of ants is the result of the collective behavior that leads the colony to find and exploit new food sources. Arboreal ant colonies must adjust the allocation of foragers to the dynamics, in space and time, of their food sources. A study of C. atratus and C. pusillus in Venezuela found that these species collect nectar, homopteran secretions, and bird droppings, and that the bacteria in their digestive tract are necessary for digestion [22,23] It appears that the gut bacteria widespread in Cephalotes are involved in fixing, upgrading or recycling nitrogen [24,25], suggesting that the ants may need only to find sources of nitrogen and of carbohydrate, but not protein. To study the foraging behavior of the polydomous turtle ant, Cephalotes goniodontus, I began by determining what food sources the ants use, where they nest and where they forage. To investigate how a colony of C. goniodontus adjusts its foraging trails, I asked: 1) How stable is a colony’s foraging area, from year to year, week to week and day to day? 2) When and on what spatial scale do colonies search for new food sources? 3) Does the allocation of foragers to a trail depend on local interactions near a food source, or is it regulated at the nest?
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