The ecology and feeding habits of the arboreal trap-jawed ant Daceton armigerum.

Alain Dejean (1, 2) , Jacques H C Delabie (3) , Bruno Corbara (4) , Fréderic Azémar (2) , Sarah Groc (5) , Jérôme Orivel (1) , Maurice Leponce (6)

1 ECOFOG - Ecologie des forêts de Guyane
2 LEFE - Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement
3 Centro de Pesquisas do Cacau, 45600-000, Itabuna, and Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, 45662-900 Ilhéus-Bahia, Brazil.
4 LMGE - Laboratoire Microorganismes : Génome et Environnement
5 Instituto de Biologia Universidade Federal de Uberlaˆndia, Uberlaˆndia
6 IRSNB - Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique

Here we show that Daceton armigerum, an arboreal myrmicine ant whose workers are equipped with hypertrophied trap-jaw mandibles, is characterized by a set of unexpected biological traits including colony size, aggressiveness, trophobiosis and hunting behavior. The size of one colony has been evaluated at ca. 952,000 individuals. Intra- and interspecific aggressiveness were tested and an equiprobable null model used to show how D. armigerum colonies react vis-à-vis other arboreal ant species with large colonies; it happens that D. armigerum can share trees with certain of these species. As they hunt by sight, workers occupy their hunting areas only during the daytime, but stay on chemical trails between nests at night so that the center of their home range is occupied 24 hours a day. Workers tend different Hemiptera taxa (i.e., Coccidae, Pseudococcidae, Membracidae and Aethalionidae). Through group-hunting, short-range recruitment and spread-eagling prey, workers can capture a wide range of prey (up to 94.12 times the mean weight of foraging workers).

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie; Biologie animale

Alain Dejean, Jacques H C Delabie, Bruno Corbara, Fréderic Azémar, Sarah Groc, et al.. The ecology and feeding habits of the arboreal trap-jawed ant Daceton armigerum.. PLoS ONE, 2012, 7 (5), pp.e37683. ⟨10.1371/journal.pone.0037683⟩. ⟨hal-00825759⟩