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Nutritional Ecology of Aphaenogaster Ants in Response to Climate Change Katie A

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Nutritional Ecology of Aphaenogaster Ants in Response to Climate Change Katie A University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM Graduate College Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 2018 Nutritional Ecology of Aphaenogaster Ants in Response to Climate Change Katie A. Miller University of Vermont Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis Part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons Recommended Citation Miller, Katie A., "Nutritional Ecology of Aphaenogaster Ants in Response to Climate Change" (2018). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 899. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/899 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate College Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NUTRITIONAL ECOLOGY OF APHAENOGASTER ANTS IN RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE A Thesis Presented by Katie Ann Miller to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Specializing in Biology May, 2018 Defense Date: March 21st, 2018 Thesis Examination Committee: Sara Helms Cahan, Ph.D., Advisor Kimberly Wallin, Ph.D., Chairperson Nicholas Gotelli, Ph.D. Jason Stockwell, Ph.D. Cynthia J. Forehand, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate College ABSTRACT Climate change is predicted to impact organismal nutritional ecology. Increased temperatures can directly accelerate physiological rate processes, which in turn, impact nutritional requirements. Climate change can also impact organisms indirectly by altering the quality and quantity of nutritional resources, creating the potential for nutritional mismatch between what nutrients are available in the environment and what organisms require. Investigation of organismal stoichiometry, particularly the balance of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus content of organisms, can help illuminate the extent to which changes in climate may impact organism nutritional ecology. Ants represent an excellent system to examine stoichiometry because they occur across a broad range of environmental conditions and perform important ecosystem services, such as seed dispersal, which may impact ecosystem functioning. In this thesis, I examined how climate variables influence ant stoichiometry across a broad latitudinal gradient in natural populations of three closely-related ant species in the genus Aphaenogaster. In a common garden study, I tested the extent to which such stoichiometric variation was due to plastic or evolved variation. I found significant species-specific differences in how ant stoichiometry responded to climate gradients. The northern species, A. picea contained more C, and less N and P at higher latitudes and elevation, consistent with increased winter lipid storage. In contrast, the more southern species, A. rudis, showed the opposite pattern, which may reflect N and P limitation at southern extremes. Aphaenogaster fulva, whose range is intermediate in latitude and partially overlaps with both congeners, contained more C in environments with more seasonal precipitation. Thus, these species appear to use different nutrient storage strategies in response to the variation in abiotic and trophic conditions across their range. When reared under the same feeding regime and thermal conditions, site-level differences in nitrogen storage between a northern and a southern ant population were retained over time and across years, suggesting that adaptive divergence in elemental composition is at least partially responsible for clinal patterns in the field. To connect latitudinal patterns to temporal changes projected under climate change, I evaluated how increases in temperature impact ant stoichiometry and associated functional traits at the individual and colony level using an experimental field mesocosm experiment at two sites, Harvard Forest (HF) and Duke Forest (DF). I examined how experimental increases in temperature impacted ant body size, colony demography, and nutritional status of two Aphaenogaster ant species. I found that Aphaenogaster ants at the northern site, HF, responded positively to direct increases in temperature, with increases in colony biomass, colony size, total reproductive output, and shifts toward increased nitrogen content with increases in temperature. In contrast, Aphaenogaster ants at the southern site, DF, were generally unaffected by temperature except for a decrease in maximum colony size with increases in temperature. Together, my findings provide evidence that both climate variables and evolutionary history impacts ant stoichiometry, which in turn, may impact ant colony fitness. Examination of the biochemical basis of stoichiometric trait variation is needed to ascertain the role stoichiometry may play in how ant species adapt to changing environmental conditions. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sara Helms Cahan, for her guidance and support throughout the graduate school process. I’d especially like to thank her for helping me to improve my writing and problem-solving skills and for being such a patient and understanding advisor. I would also like to thank my graduate committee, Nicholas Gotelli, Kimberly Wallin, and Jason Stockwell, for taking the time to provide feedback on my research and help guide me through my graduate career, in addition to providing feedback about my future endeavors. I would like to thank all the high school and undergraduate students who assisted with completing this research, especially Amanda Meyer, Delaney Smith, Bonnie Kelley, Megna Senthilnathan, Rubén A. García Reyes, Curtis Provencher, Kenzie Mahoney, Julia Cline, Simone Valcour, Jenna Todero, and Courtney Hay. I would also like to thank Manisha Patel and Aaron Ellison for assistance with protocol development and completion of the analysis of all phosphorus analyses in this research. In addition to being an extremely huge emotional support during my graduate career, Vanesa Perillo also assisted with completing analysis of soil nutrient composition. I am deeply grateful for her willingness to help me with whatever I needed during this process. I’d especially like to thank Yainna Hernáiz-Hernández (Hall), Andrew Nguyen, Mike Herrmann, Lucia Orantes, and other past members of the Helms Cahan lab, for providing emotional and logistical support throughout my graduate career. I would also like to thank the plethora of graduate students at the University of Vermont, and my “writing-group” group friends (Bailey Bradley, Shannon Smullen, Morgan Paine, and Vanesa Perillo), who provided me with a family away from home. I thank Audrey ii Maran and Dr. Shannon Pelini who assisted with my work at Harvard Forest and were a constant source of hilarity, as well as Clint Penick, whose assistance and feedback were vital to the completion of my second chapter and who provided great feedback on my future endeavors. I would also like to thank all members of the “Warm Ant Dimensions” research group. I thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) which helped fund my graduate career through a Graduate Research Fellowship and helped fund my research through a Dimensions of Biodiversity (DEB) grant. I would also like to thank the University of Vermont for the many grants, both travel and research grants, which helped to maximize my success in graduate school. Finally, I would like to deeply thank my family and friends back in Minnesota, especially my mom (Ann Miller), my dad (Mike Miller), step-mom (Maggie Miller), my sister (Mary Miller), my brothers (Jacob, Matthew, and Ben Miller), and my close friends (Jo Jo and David Thomas, and Kristen and Luke Markstrom), for their emotional support and for encouraging me throughout this whole process. You all are amazing! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. ii LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2. The Physiology of Organismal Stoichiometry ...................................................... 2 1.3. How Climate Change may impact Organism Stoichiometry and Body Size ....... 5 1.4. Research Objectives and Chapter Outline ............................................................ 8 1.5. Literature Cited ................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 2: GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN STOICHIOMETRY OF A SOCIAL INSECT .......................................................................................................... 16 2.1. Abstract ................................................................................................................ 16 2.2. Introduction.......................................................................................................... 17 2.3. Materials and Methods ........................................................................................ 21 2.3.1. Colony and sample collection sites ................................................................. 21 2.3.2.
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