Invasive fire ants reduce reproductive success and alter the reproductive strategies of a native vertebrate insectivore

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 6; no. 7; p. e22578
• Main Authors: Ligon, Russell A, Siefferman, Lynn, Hill, Geoffrey E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 20.07.2011; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Abundance; Animal behavior; Animal Feed; Animals; Ants; Biology; Biota; Birds; Breeding success; Carnivory; Communities; Competition; Drosophila; Ecosystem; Ecosystems; Female; Fire ants; Fire effects; Food resources; Forage; Forages; Habitats; Hatching; Introduced Species; Invasive species; Likelihood Functions; Male; Mimus polyglottos; Nesting; Nesting Behavior; Offspring; Parents; Parus major; Population studies; Predatory Behavior; Reproduction; Sex Ratio; Solenopsis invicta; Songbirds - physiology; Territory; Toxostoma rufum; Vertebrates; Alabama; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0022578

Introduced organisms can alter ecosystems by disrupting natural ecological relationships. For example, red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) have disrupted native arthropod communities throughout much of their introduced range. By competing for many of the same food resources as insectivorous vertebrates, fire ants also have the potential to disrupt vertebrate communities. To explore the effects of fire ants on a native insectivorous vertebrate, we compared the reproductive success and strategies of eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) inhabiting territories with different abundances of fire ants. We also created experimental dyads of adjacent territories comprised of one territory with artificially reduced fire ant abundance (treated) and one territory that was unmanipulated (control). We found that more bluebird young fledged from treated territories than from adjacent control territories. Fire ant abundance also explained significant variation in two measures of reproductive success across the study population: number of fledglings and hatching success of second clutches. Furthermore, the likelihood of bluebird parents re-nesting in the same territory was negatively influenced by the abundance of foraging fire ants, and parents nesting in territories with experimentally reduced abundances of fire ants produced male-biased broods relative to pairs in adjacent control territories. Introduced fire ants altered both the reproductive success (number of fledglings, hatching success) and strategies (decision to renest, offspring sex-ratio) of eastern bluebirds. These results illustrate the negative effects that invasive species can have on native biota, including species from taxonomically distant groups.