Temnothorax rugatulus ant colonies consistently vary in nest structure across time and context.

ABSTRACT: A host of animals build architectural constructions. Such constructions frequently vary with environmental and individual/colony conditions, and their architecture directly influences behavior and fitness. The nests of ant colonies drive and enable many of their collective behaviors, and as such are part of their 'extended phenotype'. Since ant colonies have been recently shown to differ in behavior and life history strategy, we ask whether colonies differ in another trait: the architecture of the constructions they create. We allowed Temnothorax rugatulus rock ants, who create nests by building walls within narrow rock gaps, to repeatedly build nest walls in a fixed crevice but under two environmental conditions. We find that colonies consistently differ in their architecture across envir

SUBMITTER: DiRienzo N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5479500 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature