A new tarsal gland in ants and the possible role in chemical communication

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. We thank T. Rice for her assistance with the SEM micrographs.     

New exocrine glands in ants: the hypostomal gland and basitarsal gland in the genus Melissotarsus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Fisher and Robertson (Insect Soc 46: 78–83, 1999) discovered the production of silk-like secretions emerging from slit-shaped openings along the anterior margin of the ventral hypostoma of Melissotarsus ant workers. The current histological study describes a hitherto unknown hypostomal gland from which this silk-like substance originates. In addition, this study describes a new basitarsal gland in the three pairs of legs of Melissotarsus workers.     

Communal peeing: a new mode of flood control in ants

 The behavioral response of the obligate bamboo-nesting ant Cataulacus muticus to nest flooding was studied in a perhumid tropical rainforest in Malaysia and in the laboratory. The hollow internodes of giant bamboo, in which C. muticus exclusively nests, are prone to flooding by heavy rains. The ants showed a two-graded response to flooding. During heavy rain workers block the nest entrances with their heads to reduce water influx. However, rainwater may still intrude into the nest chamber. The ants respond by drinking the water, leaving the nest and excreting water droplets on the outer stem surface. This cooperative 'peeing' behavior is a new survival mechanism adaptive to the ants' nesting ecology. Laboratory experiments conducted with two other Cataulacus species, C. catuvolcus colonizing small dead twigs and C. horridus inhabiting rotten wood, did not reveal any form of water-bailing behavior. Received: 3 August 2000 / Accepted in revised form: 6 November 2000     

Tandem carrying,a new foraging strategy in ants: description,function, and adaptive significance relative to other described foraging strategies

An important aspect of social insect biology lies in the expression of collective foraging strategies developed to exploit food. In ants, four main types of foraging strategies are typically recognized based on the intensity of recruitment and the importance of chemical communication. Here, we describe a new type of foraging strategy, “tandem carrying”, which is also one of the most simple recruitment strategies, observed in the Ponerinae species Pachycondyla chinensis. Within this strategy, workers are directly carried individually and then released on the food resource by a successful scout. We demonstrate that this recruitment is context dependent and based on the type of food discovered and can be quickly adjusted as food quality changes. We did not detect trail marking by tandem-carrying workers. We conclude by discussing the importance of tandem carrying in an evolutionary context relative to other modes of recruitment in foraging and nest emigration.     

Alarm communication: a new function for the scent-gland secretion in harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones)

Most harvestmen are nocturnal, nonacoustical, and nonvisual arthropods. They have a pair of exocrine glands on the cephalothorax that produce defensive volatile secretions. We investigated in the field the possible alarm effect of these secretions in the gregarious harvestman Goniosoma aff. proximum. A cotton swab soaked with the species' own exudate (treatment), or with water (control), was held 1-2 cm from the center of harvestmen aggregations. The results showed that the gland secretion elicits an alarm response in Goniosoma: whereas 73.3% of the aggregations dispersed after being stimulated with the gland exudate, only 3.3% responded to the water control. Respondent groups are larger than nonrespondent groups, and the time of reaction to the secretion was inversely related to group size. This is the first demonstration of a chemically-mediated alarm effect in harvestmen. The alarm response in gregarious harvestmen has possibly evolved as a by-product of a primarily defensive reaction in the context of predator avoidance. The discovery of this novel function of scent-gland secretion is meaningful in view of the widespread occurrence of gregarious habit among species of the order Opiliones.     

A new O2-microelectrode and its application

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居室内的化学污染及其防治方法

随着社会经济的高速发展,人们对办公和居室的环境也越来越崇尚舒适化和高档化。但优越的居室环境在给人带来了舒适的生活、娱乐条件的同时,也产生了许多的环境污染问题,严重影响了人民群众的身心健康。因而,如何采取有效的措施将居室环境中的污染物控制在一定的水平范围内,如何预防和降低居室空气的污染,对保障人民身心健康、提高人民生活品质具有重要的意义。     

A new technology for harnessing the dye polluted water and dye collection in a chemical factory

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Garden sharing and garden stealing in fungus-growing ants

 Fungi cultivated by fungus-growing ants (Attini: Formicidae) are passed on between generations by transfer from maternal to offspring nest (vertical transmission within ant species). However, recent phylogenetic analyses revealed that cultivars are occasionally also transferred between attine species. The reasons for such lateral cultivar transfers are unknown. To investigate whether garden loss may induce ants to obtain a replacement cultivar from a neighboring colony (lateral cultivar transfer), pairs of queenright colonies of two Cyphomyrmex species were set up in two conjoined chambers; the garden of one colony was then removed to simulate the total crop loss that occurs naturally when pathogens devastate gardens. Garden-deprived colonies regained cultivars through one of three mechanisms: joining of a neighboring colony and cooperation in a common garden; stealing of a neighbor's garden; or aggressive usurpation of a neighbor's garden. Because pathogens frequently devastate attine gardens under natural conditions, garden joining, stealing and usurpation emerge as critical behavioral adaptations to survive garden catastrophes. Received: 16 June 2000 / Accepted in revised form: 14 September 2000     

Facultative and obligate slave making in Formica ants

Here we show for the first time that the presumed facultative slave-making ant Formica subintegra does not activate outside its nest until July and August, when it raids slaves. A comparative behavioral study of seasonal and daily activities, retrieval of prey, and nest maintenance of F. subintegra, the obligate slavemaker Polyergus breviceps, and the facultative Formica subnuda, shows that the behavioral repertory of F. subintegra closely resembles that of P. breviceps and clearly differs from the repertory of F. subnuda. Unlike P. breviceps, F. subintegra has retained some nest-building activity which, owing to lack of competence, does not contribute to nest maintenance. We suggested earlier that F. subintegra is probably an obligate slavemaker, because it always has in its colonies a large proportion of slaves of the total workforce, whereas F. subnuda fares well even without slaves. This, coupled with no foraging in early summer and a raiding period later on, strongly suggests that F. subintegra is an obligate slave-making ant.     

A new design of groundwater sampling device and its application

Compounds in the atmosphere contaminate samples of groundwater. An inexpensive and simple method for collecting groundwater samples is developed to prevent contamination when the background concentration of contaminants is high. This new design of groundwater sampling device involves a glass sampling bottle with a Teflon-lined valve at each end. A cleaned and dried sampling bottle was connected to a low flow-rate peristaltic pump with Teflon tubing and was filled with water. No headspace volume was remained in the sampling bottle. The sample bottle was then packed in a PVC bag to prevent the target component from infiltrating into the water sample through the valves. In this study, groundwater was sampled at six wells using both the conventional method and the improved method. The analysis of trichlorofluoromethane（ CFC-11 ） concentrations at these six wells indicates that all the groundwater samples obtained by the conventional sampling method were contaminated by CFC-11 from the atmosphere. The improved sampling method greatly eliminated the problems of contamination, preservation and quantitative analysis of natural water.     

室内化学污染及治理

不论是工作还是起居亦或健身运动,现代都市人越来越依赖室内.这时室内环境的质量就尤其重要.本文就室内环境污染介绍了它对我们生活的影响,一些主要化学污染物的性质来源及中毒症状,在最后讲述了一些预防治理措施.     

流域系统优化调控的新模型与应用

流域系统具有复合性和非线性特征,其机理过程的数值描述本身也存在随机和认知不确定性.在此前提下,如何优化调控流域系统,实现水质改善和水生态系统健康成为当前水资源、水环境及水生态领域亟待解决的突出问题.本文提出了贝叶斯递归回归树模型和区间不确定性的风险决策分析方法,与强化区间线性规划结合形成了新的不确定性＂模拟-优化＂间接耦合模型,实现流域系统优化调控及风险决策方案.上述方法将应用于美国佛杰尼亚州Chesterfield县Swift Creek水库营养盐TMDL分配方案,确定8个子流域的最小负荷分配以实现叶绿素a浓度达标.结果表明该耦合模型既能表征流域系统特征,也能兼顾不确定性模拟的准确度、计算效率以及不确定性优化与风险决策的解空间全局最优性、绝对可行性,为流域系统优化调控及其未来非线性系统的预测与最优控制提供了新的计算工具.     

Foraging ants trade off further for faster: use of natural bridges and trunk trail permanency in carpenter ants

Trail-making ants lay pheromones on the substrate to define paths between foraging areas and the nest. Combined with the chemistry of these pheromone trails and the physics of evaporation, trail-laying and trail-following behaviours provide ant colonies with the quickest routes to food. In relatively uniform environments, such as that provided in many laboratory studies of trail-making ants, the quickest route is also often the shortest route. Here, we show that carpenter ants (Camponotus rufipes), in natural conditions, are able to make use of apparent obstacles in their environment to assist in finding the fastest routes to food. These ants make extensive use of fallen branches, twigs and lianas as bridges to build their trails. These bridges make trails significantly longer than their straight line equivalents across the forest floor, but we estimate that ants spend less than half the time to reach the same point, due to increased carriage speed across the bridges. We also found that these trails, mainly composed of bridges, are maintained for months, so they can be characterized as trunk trails. We suggest that pheromone-based foraging trail networks in field conditions are likely to be structured by a range of potentially complex factors but that even then, speed remains the most important consideration.     

新媒体时代的环境风险、环境事件和参与式沟通

<正>近年来,随着我国的社会转型和技术发展,各种"环境风险议题"密集出现,成为媒体的焦点,有时甚至引发民众恐慌与一定程度的社会对抗。比如各地民众反对PX项目、垃圾焚烧项目、以及反核项目就是如此。诸多环境事件以邻避运动形态出现,在一定程度上影响了公共利益的最大化,造成了政府和民众的"双输"困局。这种双输局面的根源则在于政府和民众之间缺乏更为制度化的有效沟通方