Most studies of ant trail networks are carried out in the laboratory and use simple trail geometries and symmetrical bifurcations.
"Most of the ant specimens belong to a big ant species with a powerful sting.
"I dug up most of my ant species myself on Long Island," she said.
Indeed, most of the ant species common on EF nectaries are rather aggressive showing strong ownership behaviour and fierce attack responses against intruders (Bentley 1977).
Savage and Penick laid out their materials where they found most of their ants, near the pedestrian crosswalks.
Like the Puerto Rico colonies, most of these ants lived like nuns in a convent.
Most of the ants had about 40 interactions, but about 10% made more than 100 contacts with their nestmates, the team reports online today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Most of the ants carried a double infection of two group A Wolbachia strains, wFex1 and wFex4, which have both been previously identified in Swiss populations of the ant F. exsecta [ 22].
A predator must be exceptionally large and determined to penetrate the screen of stinging workers that surrounds the royal quarters in most nests of ants, bees, wasps and termites.
For most species of ants, it is not known whether a male will copulate with more than one female or if a female will copulate with more than one male.
Most studies of ant-defended plants tend to parse out the interaction at the scale of the individual plant, but this study shows an impact on the whole savanna.
