The red and the black: habituation and the dear-enemy phenomenon in two desert Pheidole ants |
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Authors: | T A Langen Frédéric Tripet Peter Nonacs |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Organismic Biology, Ecology and Evolution, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA, US |
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Abstract: | Many species of territorial animals are more aggressive toward strangers than neighbors, a pattern of aggression referred
to as the ’dear-enemy phenomenon.’ In many cases, the mechanism by which neighbors are discriminated from strangers and the
function of neighbor-stranger discrimination remain controversial. We investigated the spatial patterns of inter-colony aggression
within and between two Pheidole species of seed-harvesting ants in the Mojave Desert of California by quantifying aggression between colonies in standardized
staged encounters. We also tested whether the level of fighting between workers of two colonies is affected by previous exposure
to each other. We show that neighbors (i.e., colonies less that 2.6 m away) of either species are treated less aggressively
than more distant colonies and that habituation may be a mechanism by which this discrimination is achieved. The variation
in aggression among spatially distant colonies also suggests that additional genetic or environmental factors are involved
in recognition. The function of the dear-enemy phenomenon in these ant species may be related to the greater risk to the resources
of a colony presented by strange workers than workers from a neighboring colony.
Received: 18 November 1999 / Received in revised form: 3 April 2000 / Accepted: 3 May 2000 |
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Keywords: | Aggression Dear-enemy phenomenon Habituation Territoriality Recognition systems Formicidae Pheidole |
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