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VOL. 9, ISSUE 2 (2024)
Ants’ food contact: A chance event or a cue-induced behaviour
Authors
Khokan Naskar, Srimanta Kumar Raut, Sangita Maiti Dutta
Abstract
Ants are habituated to collect the food from their foraging grounds.
But it is not clear whether they locate the food by vision or by chemical cue
or by chance contact. To verify the same, experiments were carried out by
supplying the sugar cubes to the ants Camponotus compressus, Oecophylla
smaragdina and Solenopsis geminata in their foraging ground at
Jhalda, Purulia, West Bengal, India. The foraging ground was a grassland and
each one of 10 sugar cubes was placed amongst grasses at a point 60cm away from
the nest hole or tree base but 15cm apart from each other. Observations were
made for a period of 6 hours following supply of the sugar cubes. Based on 45
trials against each species it is revealed that, on average 3.37 ± 0.09 SE,
3.02 ± 0.11 SE and 2.82 ± 0.16 SE sugar cubes were procured by C. compressus,
O. smaragdina and S. geminata respectively in each trial. Tukey’s
HSD test indicated that there exists a significant difference between the
number of sugar cubes carried by C. compressus and O. smaragdina as
well as C. compressus and S. geminata. But the differences noted
in the rate of procurement of the sugar cubes by O. smaragdina and S.
geminata are not statistically significant. Results of t tests clearly
indicated that there exists a significant difference between the sugar cubes
collected by each ant species. It is most likely that the difference in the
rate of sugar cube collection is influenced by the efficiency of the ant
species to react the chemicals emitted by the sugar cubes as a cue.
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Pages:102-106
How to cite this article:
Khokan Naskar, Srimanta Kumar Raut, Sangita Maiti Dutta "Ants’ food contact: A chance event or a cue-induced behaviour". International Journal of Entomology Research, Vol 9, Issue 2, 2024, Pages 102-106
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