Alain Dejean

..We discuss the adaptive value of snapping for hunting in galleries...

..To our knowledge, the collective creation of a trap as a predatory strategy has not been described before in ants...

..We conclude that P. megacephala's heightened ability to successfully raid colonies of competing ants may help explain its success and the decline of native ants in areas where it has been introduced...

..e., more fruits produced and more flowers that matured into fruit). This study highlights the importance of myrmecotrophy on host plant fitness and the stability of ant-myrmecophyte mutualisms...

..Thus, the predatory activity of their guest ants benefits the Cecropia trees not only because the ants protect them from defoliators since most prey are phytophagous insects but also because the plant absorbs nutrients...

..These results imply that Neotropical social wasps can be regarded as bio-indicators because they highlight the impact of climatic changes not yet perceptible in plants and other animals...

..e., Coccidae, Pseudococcidae, Membracidae and Aethalionidae). Through group-hunting, short-range recruitment and spread-eagling prey, workers can capture a wide range of prey (up to 94.12 times the mean weight of foraging workers)...

..We conclude that in this situation, previously captured prey attract potential cleptobionts that are captured in turn in most of the cases...

..For A. pallens, we show that the number of individuals captured during attempts at cleptobiosis increases with the size of the Allomerus' prey...

..albipes, and that the penetration of this species further inland might be facilitated by the low density of native, territorially dominant arboreal ants normally able to limit its progression...

..Because A. alfari and A. ovaticeps discard part of the insects they kill, we deduced that the workers' predatory behaviour and territorial aggressiveness combine in the biotic defence of their host tree...

..The same behavior is used against competing ants, including territorially-dominant arboreal species that retreat further and further away, so that the P. conradti finally drive them from large, sugary food sources...

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..Workers retrieve small prey solitarily while, for large geophilomorphs and scolopendromorphs, nestmates can be recruited at short range or even at long range through tandem running...

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..Yet, contrarily to mutualistic Azteca, when host tree development does not keep pace with colony growth, A. andreae workers forage on surrounding plants; the colonies can even move to a non-Cecropia tree...

..These results show that contrary to what was previously believed, induced responses are also found in territorially dominant arboreal ants and so are not limited to the specific associations between myrmecophytes and plant ants...

..P. megacephala scouts also use long-range recruitment when they detect the landmarks of termites and competing ant species, thus permitting them to avoid confronting these termites and ants solitarily...

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..Because macroinvertebrates constitute an important part of animal production in all ecosystem types, further investigations should address the functional implications of such indirect effects...

..Altogether, these results suggest that such an interaction might represent an as-yet undescribed type of specific association between ants and fungus in which the ants cultivate fungal mycelia to strengthen their hunting galleries...

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..Here, we describe an easy-to-use protocol for obtaining pure cultures by using cotton as a first substrate. We have further found by means of fluorescent stains that nuclei concentrate either in young hyphae or in the tips of the hyphae...

..So, by rubbing their mandibles onto the substrate, the workers probably spread a secretion from these glands that is involved in nestmate recruitment...

..These large "colonial groups" enhances the threat occasioned by S. saevissima for both agriculture and the environment...

..This study enhances our understanding of the dynamics of biodiversity, and shows how ant-plant interactions can have trophic consequences and thus influence the architecture of the interacting plant via a complex feedback loop...

..The cost of greater FB production plus the presence of the pathogenic fungus likely affect tree growth...

..mertensii leaves in a kind of plant-invertebrate-plant feedback loop...

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..alfari. Hence hostility appears to be the result of territoriality. Differences in their foraging rhythms are proposed as promoting resource and territory partitioning in this ant assemblage...

..This relationship, that appears to be a typical case of interspecific cleptobiosis, whose expression varies during the daytime, demonstrates for the first time sugary-food robbing, instead of prey robbing, in ants...

..Their flexibility to use or not use the latter technique, based on the situation, corroborates other reports that Pheidole soldiers have a relatively large behavioral repertoire...

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..Then they recruit nestmates at short-range; all together they spread-eagle the prey and retrieve them whole...

..We suggest that these interactions are more common than previously thought...

..The amalgam of these two functions, distinct in other known cases, is discussed taking into account the origin of FBs and extrafloral nectaries...

..In Hirtella physophora (Chrysobalanaceae), the focal species of this study, the ant-domatia consist of leaf pouches formed when the leaf rolls over onto itself to create two spheres at the base of the blade...

..This dear-enemy phenomenon may result from a process of habituation contributing to the ants' ability to coexist over the long term...

..saginata larvae into the ant colonies is achieved by mimicking the cuticular patterns of the ants' brood. Moreover, the larvae secrete substances from their hairs and anal gland that are likely to enhance their attractiveness...

..No sampling method alone is efficient enough to provide an adequate sampling, but their combination permits one to make a suitable inventory of the myrmecofauna and to obtain information on the ecology of these ant species...