THE ECOLOGY OF SLAVEMAKING ANTS AND THEIR HOSTS IN NORTH TEMPERATE FORESTS
THE ECOLOGY OF SLAVEMAKING ANTS AND THEIR HOSTS IN NORTH TEMPERATE FORESTS
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北温带森林中奴役蚂蚁及其宿主的生态学
DOI：
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Foitzik
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Herbers;S. Foitzik
由于它们高度专业化的生活方式，造奴蚁引起了生物学家的极大兴趣。奴隶主依靠异种“奴隶”的存在来完成日常琐事，如觅食和照顾后代。虽然我们对这些蚂蚁的行为有相当多的信息，大部分是从实验室研究中收集到的，但我们对它们的基本生态学知之甚少。在这里，我们报告了20多年来在三个地理站点收集的数据，包括两种奴隶物种和它们所奴役的三种宿主物种的发生、空间格局、巢穴使用和人口统计；都是蚁族的小蚂蚁。我们发现社会性寄生虫与其宿主之间的相互作用存在地理和时间上的差异。在每个地理地点都出现过奴隶制造者原美洲人，在每个地点，它最常见的宿主是长棘细胸；这种奴隶制造者的其他已知宿主，L. curvispinosus和L. ambigunts数量较少。在西弗吉尼亚州的一个地方，奴隶贩子的巢穴比纽约和佛蒙特州的小。来自西弗吉尼亚州的其他数据表明，奴隶贩子受到那里宿主的强烈约束，但我们发现寄生虫对宿主的影响很小。相比之下，在纽约，我们发现了强有力的证据，表明大多数寄主受到了奴隶制造者的影响：寄主的巢穴在有奴隶制造者的社区和没有寄生虫的社区之间显示出重要的生活史转变。此外，奴隶制造者能够征服那里的大型宿主巢穴，并拥有大型奴隶池。在佛蒙特州的第三个地点，寄生虫和宿主的人口统计反映出它们之间的相互作用很弱。我们在那里发现了第二种奴役物种，这两种寄生虫都优先出现在宿主密度高的地区。然而，我们没有发现人口统计学或空间上的证据表明奴隶制造者影响了他们在佛蒙特州的主人。同样，我们在任何地点都没有发现少数民族主人对奴隶制造者的人口反应的证据。因此，我们的结果表明，宿主-寄生虫的相互作用在宿主物种和地理位置之间是不同的。因此，奴隶系统可以从寄主-寄主共同进化的角度进行分析。
Slavemaking ants are of great interest to biologists because of their highly specialized lifestyle. Slavemakers rely on the presence of heterospecific "slaves" to perform routine chores such as foraging and brood care. While we have considerable information on the behavior of these ants, mostly gleaned from laboratory studies, we know very little of their basic ecology. Here we report data collected over 20 yr in three geographic sites on the occurrence, spatial pattern, nest site use, and demography of two slavemaker species and three of the host species they enslave; all are small ants in the tribe Formicoxenini. We found geographic and temporal variation with respect to the interaction between social parasites and their hosts. The slavemaker Protomognathus americanuts occurred in each geographic site, and in each its most common host was Leptothorax longispinosus; the other known hosts of this slavemaker, L. curvispinosus and L. ambigunts were less abundant. In a West Virginia site, slavemaker nests were smaller than in New York and Vermont sites. Additional data from West Virginia showed that the slavemaker is strongly constrained by its hosts there, but we found little impact of the parasite on its hosts. By contrast, in the New York site, we found strong evidence that the majority host was affected by the slavemaker: host nests showed important life history shifts between neighborhoods con- taining slavemakers vs. those that were parasite-free. Furthermore, the slavemaker was able to subjugate large host nests there and had large slave pools. In a third site in Vermont, parasite and host demography reflected their interaction weakly. We discovered a second slavemaking species there, and both parasites were preferentially found in areas of high host density. However, we uncovered no demographic or spatial evidence that slavemakers affected their hosts in Vermont. Likewise, we found no evidence in any site of demographic responses by the minority hosts to the presence of slavemakers. Thus our results imply that host-parasite interactions varied among host species and among geographic locales. The slavernaker system therefore is amenable to analysis in terms of parasite-host coevolution.