The effect of diet on colony recognition and cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of the invasive Argentine ant, Linepithema humile

The membership of social insect colonies is defined by chemical pheromones on the bodies of colony members. In nearly all ant species that have been studied, these pheromones have been shown to be genetically based. In some cases, however, environmentally derived odors have been implicated as colony recognition cues. The widely introduced and invasive Argentine ant is well known for forming massive “supercolonies” in its introduced ranges. Previous studies have implicated both genetic and diet-derived chemicals in the colony recognition systems of introduced populations. Here, we perform feeding experiments, in both realistic field settings and the lab, and show that dietary changes do not cause behavioral changes in the field, as well as under most laboratory conditions. However, one exception was found, in which reduced aggression was recorded in one of the laboratory feeding treatments (with crickets as the dietary item), but, nevertheless, not of sufficient magnitude to explain the ...

社会性昆虫群落的成员身份由群落成员体表的化学信息素（pheromones）决定。在已研究的几乎所有蚂蚁物种中，这些信息素均被证实具有遗传基础。然而，在某些情况下，环境来源的气味也被认为是群落识别的线索。广泛引入并具有入侵性的阿根廷蚁（Argentine ant）因在其引入区域形成大规模‘超级群落’（supercolonies）而闻名。先前的研究表明，遗传和饮食来源的化学物质均参与了引入种群的群落识别系统。本研究在真实野外环境和实验室中开展饲养实验，结果表明，饮食变化在野外以及大多数实验室条件下均不会引发行为改变。然而，研究发现了一个例外：在其中一种实验室饲养处理（以蟋蟀为食）中，攻击性有所降低，但这种变化的程度不足以解释……