A peaceful zone bordering two Argentine ant ( Linepithema humile ) supercolonies
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CHEMOECOLOGY
RESEARCH PAPER
A peaceful zone bordering two Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) supercolonies Laurence Berville • Olivier Blight • Marielle Renucci Abraham Hefetz • Erick Provost
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Received: 28 January 2013 / Accepted: 14 May 2013 Ó Springer Basel 2013
Abstract In invasion areas, the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) forms huge supercolonies with free exchange of individuals among nests. Two continental supercolonies on the French mediterranean coast, the Main European supercolony and the Corsican supercolony, are known to contain workers showing moderate to high levels of intersupercolony aggression. We performed chemical and behavioral assays using workers from eight coastal sites in southeastern France covering a geographical zone that includes nests of the two supercolonies, to determine the nature of worker interactions in a supercolony boundary zone. We examined how the chemical and behavioral clines vary across the borders of the Main and Corsican supercolonies. Our results on Giens peninsula and Porquerolles island populations bordering the Main supercolony reveal the existence of a peaceful border zone with no aggression between workers of the Main supercolony and the Corsican supercolony. The chemical results, however, exhibited qualitative similarity to those observed in the Corsican supercolony and revealed both quantitative and
Berville Laurence and Blight Olivier contributed equally to this study.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00049-013-0135-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. L. Berville (&) O. Blight M. Renucci E. Provost Aix-Marseille Universite´, IMBE (Institut Me´diterrane´en de Biodiversite´ et d’Ecologie marine et continentale), 7263 UMR CNRS, Campus Aix Technopoˆle Arbois-Me´diterrane´e, Pavillon Villemin, Cedex 04, Aix-en-Provence, 13545, France e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] A. Hefetz Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Ramat Aviv, Israel
qualitative chemical differences from those observed in the Main supercolony. These peaceful populations may result from fusion and/or genetic crosses between the two supercolonies, and we hypothesize that such peaceful border zones are instrumental in the evolution of supercolonies. Keywords Linepithema humile Cuticular hydrocarbons Fusion Territory border Aggressive behavior, unicoloniality
Introduction The Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, invaded the mediterranean coasts 150 years ago (Wetterer and Wetterer 2006). As with other invasive ants, the loss of territorial aggressiveness within a supercolony contributes to its invasion success (Suarez et al. 1999, 2001). L. humile was first introduced into Madeira, this island subsequently becoming a source of propagules for the invasion of the Canary Islands and later, continental Europe (Wetterer and Wetterer 2006). Propagules introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century near Toulon (M
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