Abstract
Field and laboratory studies showed that young colonies of the forest tent caterpillar, Malacosoma disstria Hubner, wandered extensively in search of food but maintained physical cohesiveness by marking trails with a pheromone secreted from the posterior end of the abdomen. Trails established by hungry caterpillars during the colony's forays are lightly marked and serve to guide dispersed siblings to a common feeding site. Trails established directly after feeding by sated caterpillars are more heavily marked and more stimulating than exploratory trails and have the immediate effect of recruiting successive waves of fed caterpillars from the current feeding site to a distant bivouac. Although caterpillars occasionally follows trails of sated siblings to food, recruitment to food is clearly not an integral component of the nomadic foraging behavior and concomitant trail marking system of this species. Comparisons are drawn between the trail system of this species and that of M. americanum (F.), a sympatric congener that recruits to food and utilizes a distinctly different fixed-base mode of foraging.
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