Nest Defense and Conspecific Enemy Recognition in the Desert
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The Ants of Oklahoma Master of Science
THE ANTS OF OKLAHOMA By Jerry H. Young(I\" Bachelor of Science Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College Stillwater, Oklahoma 1955 Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE January 1 1956 tl<lAWMA AGCMCl«.f�Al L �Ci'!AlttCAl e&U.Ull LIBRARY JUL16195 6 THE ANTS OF OKLAHOMA Thesis Approved: Thesis Adviser }>JcMem��f � 't'" he Thesis ) Committee Member of the Thesis Committee 7'4'.��Member of the Thesis Committee Head of the Department ifean of the Graduate School 361565 ii PREFACE The study of the distribution of ants in the United States has been a long and continuous process with many contributors, but the State of Oklahoma has not received the attentions of these observers to any great extent. The only known list of ants of Oklahoma is one prepared by Mo Ro Smith (1935)0 Early in 1954 a survey of the state of Oklahoma was made to determine the species present and their distributiono The results of this survey, which blanketed the entire State, are given in this paper. The author wishes to express his appreciation to Dro Do E. Howell, chairman of the writer's thesis committee, for his valuable assistance and careful guidance in the preparation of this papero Also, much guidance on preparation of this manuscrip_t was received from Drs. Do Eo Bryan, William H. Irwin and F. A. Fenton. Many of the determin ations were made by M. R. Smith.. Vital infonnation was obtained from the museums at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College and the University of Oklahoma. -
(Coleoptera: Curculionidae) for the Control of Salvinia
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2011 Introduction and Establishment of Cyrtobagous salviniae Calder and Sands (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) for the Control of Salvinia minima Baker (Salviniaceae), and Interspecies Interactions Possibly Limiting Successful Control in Louisiana Katherine A. Parys Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Entomology Commons Recommended Citation Parys, Katherine A., "Introduction and Establishment of Cyrtobagous salviniae Calder and Sands (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) for the Control of Salvinia minima Baker (Salviniaceae), and Interspecies Interactions Possibly Limiting Successful Control in Louisiana" (2011). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1565. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1565 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. INTRODUCTION AND ESTABLISHMENT OF CYRTOBAGOUS SALVINIAE CALDER AND SANDS (COLEOPTERA: CURCULIONIDAE) FOR THE CONTROL OF SALVINIA MINIMA BAKER (SALVINIACEAE), AND INTERSPECIES INTERACTIONS POSSIBLY LIMITING SUCCESSFUL CONTROL IN LOUISIANA. A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Entomology By Katherine A. Parys B.A., University of Rhode Island, 2002 M.S., Clarion University of Pennsylvania, 2004 December 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In pursing this Ph.D. I owe many thanks to many people who have supported me throughout this endeavor. -
Path Integration Controls Nest-Plume Following in Desert Ants
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Current Biology 22, 645–649, April 10, 2012 ª2012 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2012.02.029 Report Path Integration Controls Nest-Plume Following in Desert Ants Cornelia Buehlmann,1 Bill S. Hansson,1,2,* to leave and enter their nests via a central opening (Figure 2A; and Markus Knaden1,2,* for details, see Experimental Procedures). To exclude any 1Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Hans-Knoell nest-defining cues other than nest odor, we installed circular Strasse 8, 07745 Jena, Germany barriers (height, 0.1 m; Ø: 3.4 m) surrounding the arenas. A U-shaped aluminum channel (length, 2 m) pointing away from the arena was dug into the ground and led the ants under Summary the barrier toward the feeder. After about 30 min, the ants learned to enter the channel and pinpoint the feeder. Homing The desert ant Cataglyphis fortis is equipped with sophisti- ants had to pass along the channel, climb onto the arena via cated navigational skills for returning to its nest after a sand ramp, and locate the nest entrance in the center of foraging [1, 2]. The ant’s primary means for long-distance the arena. The visually identical arena setups allowed us to navigation is path integration, which provides a continuous transfer ants from the feeder of their own setup to a setup readout of the ant’s approximate distance [3] and direction connected either with a foreign nest or with no nest (no-nest [4] from the nest [5]. -
Evolution of Colony Characteristics in the Harvester Ant Genus
Evolution of Colony Characteristics in The Harvester Ant Genus Pogonomyrmex Dissertation zur Erlangung des naturwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades der Bayerischen Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg vorgelegt von Christoph Strehl Nürnberg Würzburg 2005 - 2 - - 3 - Eingereicht am: ......................................................................................................... Mitglieder der Prüfungskommission: Vorsitzender: ............................................................................................................. Gutachter : ................................................................................................................. Gutachter : ................................................................................................................. Tag des Promotionskolloquiums: .............................................................................. Doktorurkunde ausgehändigt am: ............................................................................. - 4 - - 5 - 1. Index 1. Index................................................................................................................. 5 2. General Introduction and Thesis Outline....................................................... 7 1.1 The characteristics of an ant colony...................................................... 8 1.2 Relatedness as a major component driving the evolution of colony characteristics.................................................................................................10 1.3 The evolution -
Vector Navigation in Desert Ants, Cataglyphis Fortis: Celestial Compass Cues Are Essential for the Proper Use of Distance Information
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by RERO DOC Digital Library Naturwissenschaften (2005) 92: 468–471 DOI 10.1007/s00114-005-0020-y SHORT COMMUNICATION Stefan Sommer · Rudiger¨ Wehner Vector navigation in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis: celestial compass cues are essential for the proper use of distance information Received: 12 May 2005 / Accepted: 3 July 2005 / Published online: 15 September 2005 C Springer-Verlag 2005 Abstract Foraging desert ants navigate primarily by path absence of any optic flow-field cues (Ronacher and Wehner integration. They continually update homing direction and 1995; Ronacher et al. 2000). Instead, they seem to acquire distance by employing a celestial compass and an odome- the distance information primarily by proprioceptive ter. Here we address the question of whether information means (Wohlgemuth et al. 2001, 2002; Thielin-Bescond´ about travel distance is correctly used in the absence of and Beugnon 2005). However, how this information is directional information. By using linear channels that were acquired and finally used in path integration remains to be partly covered to exclude celestial compass cues, we were elucidated. In the present account we address the question able to test the distance component of the path-integration of whether desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, are able to assess process while suppressing the directional information. Our the homing distance correctly if they are partly deprived results suggest that the path integrator cannot process the of directional information during their outbound run. distance information accumulated by the odometer while ants are deprived of celestial compass information. -
Cataglyphis Desert Ants: a Good Model for Evolutionary Biology in Darwin's
Cataglyphis desert ants: a good model for evolutionary biology in Darwin’s anniversary year—A review ALAIN LENOIR,1 SERGE ARON,2 XIM CERDÁ,3 AND ABRAHAM HEFETZ4 1IRBI, UMR CNRS 6035, Université François Rabelais, Faculté des Sciences, 37200 Tours, France. E-mail: [email protected] 2Université Libre de Bruxelles, Service Évolution Biologique & Écologie, C.P. 160/12 50, av. F.D. Roosevelt, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgique. E-mail: [email protected] 3Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Avda. Américo Vespucio s/n, E-41092 Sevilla, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] 4Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT Cataglyphis ants comprise one of the most characteristic groups of insects in arid regions around the Mediterranean basin and have been intensively stud- ied over the last 30 years. These ants are central-place foragers and scaven- gers, single-prey loaders that have become a model for insect navigation using sophisticated visual orientation, having lost pheromone orientation. They are highly heat-tolerant ants that forage close to their critical thermal limit dur- ing the hottest hours of the day, with their long-chain cuticular hydrocarbons protecting them from desiccation. This is exemplified in two Cataglyphis species, each of which developed different mechanisms for counteracting extreme heat when foraging: polymorphism of workers vs. physiological and behavioral adaptations. Several species in this genus have also become a model for studying nestmate recognition mechanisms. The role of cuticular hydrocarbons and the postpharyngeal gland as a reservoir of hydrocarbons in nestmate recognition was initially discovered mainly in Cataglyphis, includ- ing the first experimental demonstration of the Gestalt model of nestmate recognition. -
Age-Related Changes in the Number and Structure of Synapses in the Lip Region of the Mushroom Bodies in the Ant Pheidole Dentata
THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY 488:269–277 (2005) Age-Related Changes in the Number and Structure of Synapses in the Lip Region of the Mushroom Bodies in the Ant Pheidole dentata MARC A. SEID,* KRISTEN M. HARRIS, AND JAMES F.A. TRANIELLO Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215 ABSTRACT Behavioral development in the worker caste of many adult ants follows a pattern of task transitions that contribute to the division of labor within colonies. In the ant Pheidole dentata, the number of tasks that minor workers attend to increases as they progress from brood-care activities within the nest to acts outside the nest such as foraging and defense. In this study we investigated synapse maturation in the lip region of mushroom bodies in young and old minor workers because of its potentially crucial role in behavioral development, task performance, and repertoire expansion. As minor workers aged, individual presynaptic boutons enlarged and acquired more synapses and vesicles, but the total number of synapses in the lip region did not change significantly. Glial cell processes occupied less of the synaptic neuropil as ants matured. These findings indicate an expansion and enhancement of efficacy at specific sets of synaptic connections between the projection interneurons and Kenyon cell dendrites and a commensurate loss of other connections as minor workers age and expand their behavioral repertoire. J. Comp. Neurol. 488:269–277, 2005. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Indexing terms: synaptic plasticity; synapse; insect brain; Formicidae, division of labor; bouton Both experience- and age-related neural changes are (temporal polyethism) in which newly eclosed adult work- known to accompany behavioral development in verte- ers care for brood within the nest and progress, without brates and invertebrates (Kolb and Whishaw, 1998; Farris task overlap, to foraging and other acts outside the nest et al., 2001). -
Path Integration As the Basic Navigation Mechanism of the Desert Ant Cataglyphis Fortis (FOREL, 1902) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Myrmecological News 11 53-62 Vienna, August 2008 Path integration as the basic navigation mechanism of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis (FOREL, 1902) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Bernhard RONACHER Abstract This review describes recent progress in the analysis of the fascinating navigation abilities of desert ants. On their for- aging excursions, ants of the genus Cataglyphis cover distances up to hundred thousand body lengths. Having found a prey item they return to their inconspicuous nests with high precision, using path integration as their major navigation aid. This account focuses on the question of how these ants measure their travelling distances, information that is an es- sential constituent of path integration. Recently it has been shown that Cataglyphis uses a stride integrator to measure walking distances. Remarkably, the ants' path integration module works precisely even when the animals forage in un- dulating terrain, e.g., when climbing over walls or hills. This indicates that the ants are able to measure the inclination of ascents or descents, and do integrate this information into their distance estimates. Navigation by means of path integra- tion is error prone due to its susceptibility to accumulate errors. Cataglyphis and other desert ant species use landmarks – if present – as additional navigational aid. Many studies were devoted to the interactions between the path integration system and landmarks. There are no indications that by combining vector and landmark information ants would acquire a representation of their environs in the sense of a "cognitive map". A lesson that we may learn from the small-brain navigator Cataglyphis is how complex, "high-level" behaviour is achieved by the interaction of rather simple, "low- level" subroutines. -
Optomotor Response Reduced by Procaine Injection in The
OPTOMOTOR RESPONSE REDUCED BY PROCAINE INJECTION IN THE CENTRAL COMPLEX OF THE COCKROACH, BLABERUS DISCOIDALIS BY: MALAVIKA KESAVAN Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Science Dissertation Adviser: Dr. Roy Ritzmann Department of Biology CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY January, 2014 1 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of Malavika Kesavan candidate for the Master of Science degree *. (Committee Chair) Dr. Jean Burns Dr. Roy Ritzmann Dr. Mark Willis Dr. Barbara Freeman (date) 08/28/2013 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………….. 8 INTRODUCTION ...………………………………………………………………….. 9 Basic anatomy of the B. discoidalis …………………………………………………. 11 External Anatomy …………………………………………………………….. 11 Internal Anatomy ……………………………………………………………... 11 The Head Ganglia in Insects ………………………………………………….. 12 The Central Complex: Anatomy ……………………………………………… 14 Focus of project ……………………………………………………………………… 16 Basic Visual Information Flow in Insects ………………………………………….. 16 Anatomy ……………………………………………………………………… 17 Basic Visual Movement Detection ………………………………………….... 18 The Central Complex ……………………………………………………………….. 19 Comparative Approach lends Insight into function of Central Complex .......... 19 Overview of Central Complex Development ………………………………… 19 The Central Complex's influence on Spatial Orientation …………………….. 21 The Central Complex Role in Changing Motor Behavior……………………… 22 The Central Complex and Memory …………………………………………... 25 Motor Behavior -
A Review of Effects of Environment on Brain Size in Insects
insects Review A Review of Effects of Environment on Brain Size in Insects Thomas Carle Faculty of Biology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan; [email protected] Simple Summary: What makes a big brain is fascinating since it is considered as a measure of intelligence. Above all, brain size is associated with body size. If species that have evolved with complex social behaviours possess relatively bigger brains than those deprived of such behaviours, this does not constitute the only factor affecting brain size. Other factors such as individual experience or surrounding environment also play roles in the size of the brain. In this review, I summarize the recent findings about the effects of environment on brain size in insects. I also discuss evidence about how the environment has an impact on sensory systems and influences brain size. Abstract: Brain size fascinates society as well as researchers since it is a measure often associated with intelligence and was used to define species with high “intellectual capabilities”. In general, brain size is correlated with body size. However, there are disparities in terms of relative brain size between species that may be explained by several factors such as the complexity of social behaviour, the ‘social brain hypothesis’, or learning and memory capabilities. These disparities are used to classify species according to an ‘encephalization quotient’. However, environment also has an important role on the development and evolution of brain size. In this review, I summarise the recent studies looking at the effects of environment on brain size in insects, and introduce the idea that the role of environment might be mediated through the relationship between olfaction and vision. -
Landmark Guidance and Vector Navigation in Outbound Desert Ants
3370 The Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 3370-3377 Published by The Company of Biologists 2008 doi:10.1242/jeb.022715 Landmark guidance and vector navigation in outbound desert ants Tobias Merkle1,* and Rüdiger Wehner2 1Centre for Visual Sciences, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia and 2Institute of Zoology and Brain Research Institute, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland *Author for correspondence (e-mail: [email protected]) Accepted 6 September 2008 SUMMARY This study deals with the influence landmark information has on the foraging behaviour of the desert ant, Cataglyphis fortis, especially with the interaction of such landmark information with the antsʼ path integration system. We show in the first experiment that desert ants that are captured immediately after leaving their nest and then transferred to a remote test area search for the nest rather than activate their previous path integration vector. In a second experiment, the ants had been trained to a landmark corridor on their way to the feeder. In the critical test situation, they were again captured immediately after they had left the nest and transferred to a test field where they faced one of the following three situations: (1) the same landmark corridor as used during the training phase, (2) no landmarks at all and (3) a landmark corridor rotated by 90 deg. as compared with the training situation. Nearly all ants in test situation (1) eventually followed the landmark corridor but most of them never reached the fictive feeder. In situation (2), the ants searched around the nest entrance. -
Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Author(S) :Mark Deyrup and Zachary A
Solenopsis Enigmatica, a New Species of Inquiline Ant from the Island of Dominica, West Indies (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Author(s) :Mark Deyrup and Zachary A. Prusak Source: Florida Entomologist, 91(1):70-74. 2008. Published By: Florida Entomological Society DOI: 10.1653/0015-4040(2008)091[0070:SEANSO]2.0.CO;2 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/ full/10.1653/0015-4040%282008%29091%5B0070%3ASEANSO%5D2.0.CO %3B2 BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainable online platform for over 170 journals and books published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses. Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance of BioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/ terms_of_use. Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiries or rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder. BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. 70 Florida Entomologist 91(1) March 2008 SOLENOPSIS ENIGMATICA, A NEW SPECIES OF INQUILINE ANT FROM THE ISLAND OF DOMINICA, WEST INDIES (HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE) MARK DEYRUP1 AND ZACHARY A. PRUSAK2 1Archbold Biological Station, P.O. Box 2057, Lake Placid, FL 33862 E-mail: [email protected] 2The Nature Conservancy, 222 South Westmonte Drive, Suite 300,Altamonte Springs, FL 32714 E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT A new species of ant, Solenopsis enigmatica, is described from 2 dealate queens and 3 work- ers collected from nests of Pheidole antillana Forel in rainforest on the island of Dominica, West Indies.