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Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability
Invasive species are a major threat to biodiversity when dominant within their newly established habitat. The globally distributed Argentine ant Linepithema humile has been reported to break the trade-off between interference and exploitative competition, achieve high population densities, and overp...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3942413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24594633 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0090173 |
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author | Westermann, Fabian Ludwig Suckling, David Maxwell Lester, Philip John |
author_facet | Westermann, Fabian Ludwig Suckling, David Maxwell Lester, Philip John |
author_sort | Westermann, Fabian Ludwig |
collection | PubMed |
description | Invasive species are a major threat to biodiversity when dominant within their newly established habitat. The globally distributed Argentine ant Linepithema humile has been reported to break the trade-off between interference and exploitative competition, achieve high population densities, and overpower nests of many endemic ant species. We have used the sensitivity of the Argentine ant to the synthetic trail pheromone (Z)-9-hexadecanal to investigate species interactions for the first time. We predicted that disrupting Argentine ant trail following behaviour would reduce their competitive ability and create an opportunity for three other resident species to increase their foraging success. Argentine ant success in the control was reduced with increasing pheromone concentration, as predicted, but interactions varied among competing resident species. These behavioural variations provide an explanation for observed differences in foraging success of the competing resident species and how much each of these individual competitors can increase their foraging if the competitive ability of the dominant invader is decreased. The mechanism for the observed increase in resource acquisition of resident species appears to be a decrease in aggressive behaviour displayed by the Argentine ant, which may create an opportunity for other resident species to forage more successfully. Our demonstration of species interactions with trail pheromone disruption is the first known case of reduced dominance under a pheromone treatment in ants. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3942413 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-39424132014-03-06 Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability Westermann, Fabian Ludwig Suckling, David Maxwell Lester, Philip John PLoS One Research Article Invasive species are a major threat to biodiversity when dominant within their newly established habitat. The globally distributed Argentine ant Linepithema humile has been reported to break the trade-off between interference and exploitative competition, achieve high population densities, and overpower nests of many endemic ant species. We have used the sensitivity of the Argentine ant to the synthetic trail pheromone (Z)-9-hexadecanal to investigate species interactions for the first time. We predicted that disrupting Argentine ant trail following behaviour would reduce their competitive ability and create an opportunity for three other resident species to increase their foraging success. Argentine ant success in the control was reduced with increasing pheromone concentration, as predicted, but interactions varied among competing resident species. These behavioural variations provide an explanation for observed differences in foraging success of the competing resident species and how much each of these individual competitors can increase their foraging if the competitive ability of the dominant invader is decreased. The mechanism for the observed increase in resource acquisition of resident species appears to be a decrease in aggressive behaviour displayed by the Argentine ant, which may create an opportunity for other resident species to forage more successfully. Our demonstration of species interactions with trail pheromone disruption is the first known case of reduced dominance under a pheromone treatment in ants. Public Library of Science 2014-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3942413/ /pubmed/24594633 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0090173 Text en © 2014 Westermann et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Westermann, Fabian Ludwig Suckling, David Maxwell Lester, Philip John Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability |
title | Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability |
title_full | Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability |
title_fullStr | Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability |
title_full_unstemmed | Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability |
title_short | Disruption of Foraging by a Dominant Invasive Species to Decrease Its Competitive Ability |
title_sort | disruption of foraging by a dominant invasive species to decrease its competitive ability |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3942413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24594633 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0090173 |
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