Competição entre colônias de Dinoponera quadriceps (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Ponerinae)

Abstract

The competition for access to sources of food resources, territory, and reproductive partners between individuals of the same species or not encompasses a range of behaviors, often costly to those involved. The establishment and maintenance of territories and areas of use, in social insects are based on a complex communication system and division of labor. In this study, the objective was to analyze the intraspecific competition between neighboring colonies of Dinoponera quadriceps. For this, three neighboring colonies of D. quadriceps were chosen within the secondary Atlantic Forest area of the FLONA of Nísia Floresta / RN. The observations occurred between May and August 2018. It occurred two days a week, ten hours a day, and totaled 300 hours of observation. One ant was observed at a time, from the time it left the nest until it returned. The behaviors of food capture, affiliative interaction, agonistic interaction and chemical marking were recorded through the technique all occurrences. The displacements and places where these behaviors occurred were marked with numbered flags and then measured with compass and line. Our findings indicate that nests of D. quadriceps have a large area of use foraging and that is very overlapping areas of neighboring colonies. The size of the area of use did not vary in relation to the population density of the nest. The chemical marking and agonistic interaction behaviors showed no significant difference in areas of overlap and non-overlapping and also between the distances in which the ant was located from the nest, but it was more frequent at the border region of each area used by the ants. Characteristics of the competitive behavior of D. quadriceps were also found in other species of ants and are related to the probable decrease in the cost of active defense of a fixed territory.