ArticleDie Naturwissenschaften2014
Nesting habits shape feeding preferences and predatory behavior in an ant genus.
Article in Die Naturwissenschaften, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Foraging behaviour affects nest architecture in a cross-species comparison of ant nests.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Adaptive trade-offs between vertebrate defence and insect predation drive Amazonian ant venom evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Heterodimeric Insecticidal Peptide Provides New Insights into the Molecular and Functional Diversity of Ant Venoms.ACS pharmacology & translational science · 2020Article
- Peptidomic investigation ofThe journal of venomous animals and toxins including tropical diseases · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We tested if nesting habits influence ant feeding preferences and predatory behavior in the monophyletic genus Pseudomyrmex (Pseudomyrmecinae) which comprises terrestrial and arboreal species, and, among the latter, plant-ants which are obligate inhabitants of myrmecophytes (i.e., plants sheltering so-called plant-ants in hollow structures). A cafeteria experiment revealed that the diet of ground-nesting Pseudomyrmex consists mostly of prey and that of arboreal species consists mostly of sugary substances, whereas the plant-ants discarded all the food we provided. Workers forage solitarily, detecting prey from a distance thanks to their hypertrophied eyes. Approach is followed by antennal contact, seizure, and the manipulation of the prey to sting it under its thorax (next to the ventral nerve cord). Arboreal species were not more efficient at capturing prey than were ground-nesting species. A large worker size favors prey capture. Workers from ground- and arboreal-nesting species show several uncommon behavioral traits, each known in different ant genera from different subfamilies: leaping abilities, the use of surface tension strengths to transport liquids, short-range recruitment followed by conflicts between nestmates, the consumption of the prey's hemolymph, and the retrieval of entire prey or pieces of prey after having cut it up. Yet, we never noted group ambushing. We also confirmed that Pseudomyrmex plant-ants live in a kind of food autarky as they feed only on rewards produced by their host myrmecophyte, or on honeydew produced by the hemipterans they attend and possibly on the fungi they cultivate.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.