Adventures Among Ants - Mark W. Moffett [175]
26. Thanks to Bob Jeanne and Anna Dornhaus for discussions on this issue, which was first addressed by CD Michener 1964, Reproductive efficiency in relation to colony size in hymenopterous societies, Insectes Soc. 11: 317–341.
27. Can a large colony bounce back from a conflict more easily because it will have enough survivors to take over the important functions previously handled by its lost members or because its population will rebound faster through more prolific reproduction? Neither idea is completely credible. A loss of 100,000 workers in a colony of 1,000,000 could make all the difference if that colony then has to spar with neighbors that are also a million strong, whereas even modest losses can be devastating in the long term to small human bands that face conflict frequently. See Lawrence H. Keeley, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
28. DW Davidson, J-P Lessard, CR Bernau, SC Cook 2007, The tropical ant mosaic in a primary Bornean rain forest, Biotropica 39: 468–475.
29. See figure 4-3 in A Buschinger, U Maschwitz, Defensive behavior and defensive mechanisms in ants, in Defensive Mechanisms in Social Insects, ed. Henry R. Hermann (New York: Praeger Scientific, 1984), pp. 95–150.
30. Fights between human hunter-gatherer bands are often personal campaigns that usually result in isolated deaths in stealthy, relatively low-risk raids in which all participants have something to gain—the kind of attack conducted by chimpanzees as well. Repeated raids could add up to heavy mortality and the extinction of entire bands in times of scarcity, but pitched battles and massacres, which are typically perilous and based on sacrifice for the society rather than direct self-interest, are the exception. See DT Campbell 1975, On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition, Am. Psychol. 30: 1103–1126. Internal division of human societies into hierarchies and subgroupings, which tends to go hand in hand with population growth, may also be the primary driver of warfare; see Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origin of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
31. See, e.g., N Blüthgen, K Fiedler 2004, Competition for composition: Lessons from nectar-feeding ant communities, Ecology 85: 1479–1485.
32. A Dejean, B Corbara, J Orivel, M Leponce 2007, Rainforest canopy ants: The implications of territoriality and predatory behavior, Func. Ecosyst. Commu. 1: 105–120.
33. DA Jackson 1984, Ant distribution patterns in a Cameroonian cocoa plantation: Investigation of the ant mosaic hypothesis, Oecologia 62: 318–324. For rules of engagement between ant colonies, see NR Franks, LW Partridge 1993, Lanchester battles and the evolution of combat in ants, Anim. Behav. 45: 197–199.
34. Pruning attached plants and patrolling for herbivores may occur in an exaggerated (and more tightly targeted) manner in ants involved in ant-plant relationships as compared to ant species with a looser association with resident trees, such as Oecophylla, but potentially mutualistic advantages could apply to both. See DW Davidson, JT Longino, RR Snelling 1988, Pruning of host plant neighbors by ants: An experimental approach, Ecology 69: 801–808.
35. ME Frederickson, MJ Greene, DM Gordon 2005, “Devil’s gardens” bedevilled by ants, Nature 437: 495–496.
36. Some have attacked the idea that mosaics exist, which is strange to those of us who climb into the trees to observe the distribution of ants in them firsthand. For a review of concepts and controversies, see N Blüthgen, NE Stork 2007, Ant mosaics in a tropical rainforest in Australia and elsewhere: A critical review, Aust. Ecol. 32: 93–104.
37. For example, see NJ Sanders, GM Crutsinger, RR Dunn, JD Majer, JHC Delabie 2007, An ant mosaic revisited: Dominant ant species disassemble arboreal ant communities but co-occur