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Size matters: mole (Talpa europaea) hills and nest-site selection of the ant Formica exsecta

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Population Ecology

Abstract

Moles are fossorial mammals that can act both as zoogeomorphic agents and species diversity drivers. These popular animals regularly push heaps of earth from their subterranean tunnel systems to the surface. Thereby they rearrange and improve the local microtopography for ant nesting. Here we use a strongly molehill (Talpa europaea) mediated nest system of the unicolonial wood ant Formica (Coptoformica) exsecta to test for ecological factors influencing nest-site selection at the microhabitat scale. Our results show that the size of molehills plays an important role in the multifactorial process of the ant’s nest-site choice with solar insolation as a paramount factor. The ants clearly favored larger and better sun-exposed molehills, suggesting that the coaction of a zoogeomorphic modified microrelief and solar insolation can drive the spatial colonization of F. exsecta.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to students of the field course in 2000 for valuable help and Klaus Dohrmann (University of Halle, Biological Field Station at Faule Ort) for technical support. Financial support was granted by the Jost Reinhold Foundation (to P.B.) and a fellowship of the Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt (to A.K.). The experiments carried out in this study comply with the current laws of Germany. We wish to thank the Müritz National Park staff for granting work permission (research contract 5303.0-4).

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  1. Institut für Biologie, Institutsbereich Zoologie, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, 06099, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Andreas Katzerke, Peter Bliss & Robin F. A. Moritz

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  1. Andreas Katzerke
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  2. Peter Bliss
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  3. Robin F. A. Moritz
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Correspondence to Andreas Katzerke.

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Katzerke, A., Bliss, P. & Moritz, R.F.A. Size matters: mole (Talpa europaea) hills and nest-site selection of the ant Formica exsecta . Popul Ecol 52, 271–277 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-009-0180-2

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