Data from:Open and closed economies as possible alternative strategies to resource heterogeneity in ants

Ant colonies have either a single nest (monodomy) or multiple nests
(polydomy). A challenge is to explain their adaptive significane,
specifying costs and benefits of each colony type. An explanation for ant
polydomy is adaptation to spatially heterogenous environments. With
polydomy a colony can exchange complementary nutrition among nests within
the entire colony occupying a wide territory. We tested this resource
redistribution hypothesis using two closely related species,i.e. the
polydomous ant Pheidole megacephala and the monodomous ant Pheidole noda.
We put each colony in an artificially polydomous setting with two nests
connected by tubes. We provided liquid food lacking protein to one nest
and that lacking carbohydrates to the other nest. P. megacephala almost
totally failed to produce brood when the connecting tubes were clipped,
whereas it improved reproductive performance when the tubes were open. In
marked contrast, P. noda, managed to maintain high performance for a long
period even when only nutritionally biased food was provided, most likely
by relying on stored provisions that compensated for the missing
nutrients. Based on these data we propose the hypothesis that ant polydomy
is an open economic strategy to counter heterogeneity in resource
distribution 'spatially' by trading between nests and extending
the resource searching area, whereas monodomy may be a closed economic
strategy to cope with resource heterogeneity `temporally` by withstanding
food-depressed periods with stored nutrition and by efficient utilization
of frugal diets. More empirical data in other ant taxa are necessary to
test generality of this idea.