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.本数据集采集于中国云南南部的西双版纳热带植物园（Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, XTBG）。2017年与2018年的6-7月期间，研究团队在该植物园园区及周边区域采集了弓背蚁属（Polyrhachis）蚁群。研究人员将采集到的蚁群饲养于该野外站实验室的塑料容器（尺寸为17 × 11.5 × 10 cm）中，并定期为每个蚁群提供标准液态糖食（50%糖与50%水溶液混合），以近似模拟其天然含糖食物来源。物种鉴定工作于实验室中完成，依据原始分类文献以及AntWeb.org（2017年6-7月访问）提供的标本图像。所有物种的凭证标本均保存于美国伊利诺伊州芝加哥市菲尔德自然历史博物馆，以及中国云南昆明西南林业大学标本馆。随后，研究团队开展了多项行为实验，包括资源发现速率、觅食投入强度与竞争能力测定实验，同时利用食蚁蜘蛛（Siler semiglaucus）开展反捕食能力测定实验。有关本次实验的详细信息，请参阅相关研究论文。