A Day in the Life of the Giant Ant Dinoponera lucida Emery, 1901 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae): Records of Activities and Intraspecific Interactions

Abstract

Ants present a wide variety of nesting sites, feeding habits, and trophic interactions, but the biology of most species remains unknown. Dinoponera lucida is a poneromorph ant forest-specialist and solitary forager, endemic to the Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Herein we describe foraging activities, guard and maintenance of the nests, orientation mode, and intraspecific interactions performed by D. lucida. We found three nests distant from each other at least 8.5 m, and the mean reached distance by a worker was 3.8 m. The workers showed colony fidelity and random forage in their territory. We observed two non-agonistic interactions between workers from the same nest, and two agonistic interactions between foraging workers from different nests. The low frequency of agonistic interactions suggests that workers from different nests are unlikely to forage in the same area. Our results expand the knowledge on ants’ natural history through data on foraging activities, guard and maintenance of the nests, orientation mode and intraspecific interactions.

Keywords

• foraging behavior
• orientation sense
• guard
• maintenance
• intraspecific interactions