Abstract
Slave-making ants exploit the labour of their own or another species. Temnothorax ambiguus and T. longispinosus are both ant species that serve as hosts of the obligatory slave-making ant Protomognathus americanus and are facultative slave-makers themselves. We offered laboratory colonies of T. ambiguus and T. longispinosus a series of choices among different larval types to better understand their brood discrimination abilities. Workers of both species preferentially accepted nestmate over non-nestmate larvae. Both species preferentially retrieved unrelated conspecific larvae over congeneric allospecific larvae, and T. ambiguus workers consumed more allospecifics than conspecifics. When presented with conspecific versus P. americanus larvae, both species manifested a clear bias towards conspecific larvae in terms of earlier retrieval and reduced cannibalism. That workers did not prefer P. americanus larvae over conspecific larvae as documented in previous research likely reflects the fact that in the present study, subject workers had access to the entirety of their colony as a referent during rearing and at the time of testing, as they would in nature. Moreover, reciprocal contact between P. americanus and conspecific larvae increased acceptance of the slave-maker larvae, but did not appear to lessen the acceptability of conspecific larvae. This suggests that transfer of cues through contact may be sufficient to alter the recognition signature of P. americanus larvae increasing acceptability by their hosts.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postgraduate Scholarship and a Manitoba Graduate Scholarship awarded to D.C.S. and a NSERC Discovery Grant awarded to J.F.H. We are grateful to T.M. Alloway and J. Beckwith for helping with the collection of ants and for providing valuable insight into the habits of our study organisms. W. Freeman also assisted during ant collection and S. Whyard provided initial cultures of Drosophila melanogaster. Thanks to S. Sealy, R. Currie and A. Roche for constructive feedback on the thesis from which this manuscript was derived and to four anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this manuscript. C. Swan provided valuable assistance with the construction of artificial nests. Special thanks to M. Bromilow for her love and care of D.C.S. and the ants used in this study.
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Swan, D.C., Hare, J.F. Larval recognition by Temnothorax longispinosus and T. ambiguus hosts of the slave-making ant Protomognathus americanus revisited: colony-level referent ensures conspecific preference. Insect. Soc. 59, 511–517 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-012-0245-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-012-0245-7