Behavioral and hormonal responses to urbanization in ants

Urbanization has profound effects on biological communities. Many organisms cannot persist in anthropogenic environments, while others may adapt to urban conditions. Behavioral traits can facilitate this adaptation and predict how species might respond to urbanization. We studied the behavior of the odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile) which is common in both natural (i.e., forests) and urban areas. Relative to natural environments, colonies in urban areas are typically more aggressive and have many more workers and queens. To examine how this variation may influence other behaviors, we compared the exploratory behavior of T. sessile workers and colonies from natural and urban environments. We found repeatable variation in exploratory behavior, suggesting workers have distinct behavioral types. Additionally, colonies from natural environments had higher exploration and foraging activity relative to urban colonies. Activity also varied among ants with different behavioral roles - workers..., , # Data from: Behavioral and hormonal responses to urbanization in ants

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdff](10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdff)

## Description of the data and file structure

This was a study exploring behavioral and hormonal differences in odorous house ants. Details of methods can be found in the manuscript, which will be linked here upon publication. 

### Files and variables

#### File: collective_foraging.csv

**Description:** 

##### Variables

* time: time at which ants were sampled 
* time_minutes: time since start of study ants were sampled
* foraging_rate: number of workers present at foraging box
* colony: location ants were collected from
* type: type of environment ants were collected from
* replicate: which replicate of this colony data corresponds to
* treatment: defines if colony was treated with control or octopamine concentration

#### File: LC-MS_feeding.csv

**Description:** 

##### Variables

* sample_ID: unique ID for each sample (which is pooled with mult...,