Ant community and habitat limit colony establishment by the fire ant, Solenopis invicta

Hypotheses of community assembly include limitation through habitat physical attributes, as well as competition among species. Such hypotheses must be resolved through experimental tests.
Previous experiments have shown that: (i) fire ants of the monogyne social form occur mostly in highly disturbed habitat where they do not compete with mature colonies of co-occurring ants; (ii) in native pine forests of northern Florida, habitat disturbance favours fire ants while simultaneously reducing native ants; (iii) fire ants thrive in these disturbances but do not persist as these become less disturbed over time; and finally, (iv) newly mated, dispersing/colony-founding fire ant queens settle preferentially in such disturbed sites.
We now show that by choosing disturbed sites, newly mated, monogyne fire ant queens greatly increase their chances of successful colony establishment. Experimental plots were created in the native ground cover of a north Florida pine forest with all combinations o...