The discrepancy between fire ant recruitment to and performance on rodent carrion

Ants have not been considered important in the process of vertebrate carrion decomposition, but a recent literature review reported over 150 carrion-visiting ant species. Though many ant species have been observed to remove carrion tissue and consume carrion-exuded liquids, the significance of ant r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScientific reports Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 71
Main Authors Lin, Constance, Tarone, Aaron M., Eubanks, Micky D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 07.01.2022
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects
631/158
631/158/2178
631/158/2445
631/158/853
Animals
Ants - physiology
Cadaver
Carrion
Colonies
Feeding Behavior
Food quality
Humanities and Social Sciences
Insects
Laboratories
Literature reviews
Mice
multidisciplinary
Nutritive Value
Predatory Behavior
Prey
Rats
Recruitment
Rodents
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Time Factors
Vertebrates
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Summary:Ants have not been considered important in the process of vertebrate carrion decomposition, but a recent literature review reported over 150 carrion-visiting ant species. Though many ant species have been observed to remove carrion tissue and consume carrion-exuded liquids, the significance of ant recruitment to vertebrate carrion is poorly understood. We conducted a combination of field and laboratory experiments to quantify red imported fire ant recruitment to rodent carrion and determine whether consuming rodent carrion is beneficial to ant colony performance. In the field, 100% of rat carcasses were rapidly colonized by fire ants at high abundances. In our laboratory experiment, the performance of mice-fed fire ant colonies was poor when compared to colonies that were fed mice and insects or insects only. Our results suggest that there is a discrepancy between high levels of fire ant recruitment to vertebrate carrion and the poor colony performance when fed carrion. We hypothesize that fire ants are attracted to vertebrate carrion not because it is a high-quality food, but rather because it hosts large numbers of other invertebrates that can serve as prey for fire ants, potentially showcasing an interesting case of tritrophic interaction in carrion ecology.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-04051-8