Spine and dine: A key defensive trait promotes ecological success in spiny ants

These data were collected at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) in southern Yunnan in southern China. During June and July of 2017 and 2018, we collected Polyrhachis colonies in and around XTBG. We kept the colonies in the field station laboratory in plastic containers (17 × 11.5 × 10 cm), and regularly provided each colony a standard liquid sugar diet (50% sugar/50% water solution) as a rough approximation of their natural sugary food sources. Species were identified in the laboratory using the primary literature and images from AntWeb.org (accessed June–July 2017). Species voucher specimens were deposited in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL, USA, and the Southwest Forestry University Specimen Hall in Kunming, Yunnan, China. We then conducted a number of resource discovery rate, foraging effort, and competitive ability trials, as well as anti-predator ability trials using the myrmecophagous spide Siler semiglaucus. See the associated manuscript for further details about the trials we conducted.