Adventures Among Ants - Mark W. Moffett [168]
5. C Seignobos, JP Deguine, HP Aberlenc 1996, Les Mofu et leurs insectes, J. d’Agri. Tradition. Bot. Appl. 33: 125–187.
6. D Inward, G Beccaloni, P Eggleton 2007, Death of an order: A comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches, Biol. Lett. 3: 331–335.
7. There was an indication that the ants might process termites for short-term storage rather than eating them at once. Termite reproductives were taken to the old nest with their limbs hanging loosely. By the time they were transported to the new nest they resembled streamlined lozenges, each leg and wing having been trimmed. Not that this helped: after the migration, the ants still had more food than they could handle, and the termites piled in the new nest were already starting to stink.
8. The only seeds army ants take are those with elaiosomes, digestible outgrowths similar in composition to insect prey, which plants use to lure ants to carry seeds off without eating the embryo within; see L Hughes, M Westoby, E Jurado 1994, Convergence of elaiosomes and insect prey: Evidence from ant foraging behavior and fatty acid composition, Funct. Ecol. 8: 358–365.
9. The narrow defense function of Eciton soldiers is affirmed by H Topoff, K Lawson, P Richards 1973, Trail following in two species of the army ant genus Eciton: Comparison between major and intermediate-sized workers, Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 66: 109–111.
10. Probably the migrations of some army ants are more commonly triggered by problems at the nest (e.g., inserting a stick) than by a dearth of food. Colonies choose a nest site over the course of a few hours at most, necessarily based on limited information. Expropriation by a returning animal, floods, and unstable support branches or cavity walls are likely.
11. For the original report, see A Dejean, PJ Solano, J Ayroles, B Corbara, J Orivel 2005, Insect behaviour: Arboreal ants build traps to capture prey, Nature 434: 973.
12. My research was done on the ant shrub Cordia nodosa, which has arcades that appear identical to those of Hirtella physophora, the host plant to Allomerus decemarticulatus in French Guiana, where the study by Dejean et al. took place (see note 11). For my experiments I used Orthoptera 6 to 15 mm long—all smaller than the grasshopper shown in the photograph in the original study. To determine how well Allomerus used this tactic to catch prey, I forced the issue by holding forty grasshoppers in forceps against a covered trail for fifteen seconds—longer than any healthy insect would stay put while being stung and bitten. All escaped the ants easily thereafter, except a small one, which was killed and eaten. I thank Frederick Prete for advice on the limitations of orthopteran vision and locomotion.
8. Notes from Underground
1. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper, 1958), p. 23.
2. A Raignier, J van Boven 1955, Etude taxonomique, biologique et biométrique des Dorylus du sous-genre Anomma, Annales du Musée Royal du Congo Belge, n.s. 4, Sciences Zoologiques 2: 1–359.
3. For Old World army ants, see C Schöning, WM Njagi, NR Franks 2005, Temporal and spatial patterns in the emigrations of the army ant Dorylus (Anomma) molestus in the montane forest of Mt. Kenya, Ecol. Entomol. 30: 532–540. Fights have been documented for Asian subterranean species; see SM Berghoff, J Gadau, T Winter, KE Linsenmair, and U Maschwitz 2003, Sociobiology of hypogaeic army ants: Characterization of two sympatric Dorylus species on Borneo and their colony conflicts, Insectes Soc. 50: 139–147. Also, African Typhlopone army ants are focused predators of driver ants; see JM Leroux 1982, Ecologie des populations de dorylines Anomma nigricans dans la région de Lamto (Côte d’Ivoire), Publications du Laboratoire de Zoologie,