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All plaster casts shown to the same scale. Seen from left to right, these approximately represent the progress of nest growth. Note the increase in nest depth, number and size of chambers, and the occasional occurrence of two shafts.
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The architecture of subterranean nests of the ant Camponotus socius was studied from casts of plaster or metal. Twenty-four such casts are illustrated using stereo pairs of images. After study, plaster casts were dissolved to retrieve the workers embedded in them, providing a census of the ants that excavated the nest. Nests were up to 60 cm deep,...
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Citations
... Ant nests are generated via earth removal, rather than above-ground build, and may be based on various behavioural programmes, in contrast to well-studied wasp and bee nests. Most publications only give brief verbal descriptions or crude drawings premised on excavations, and rarely include quantitative details of the collective distribution of ant colonies or the construction of ant nests [9]. The fact that ants dig underground nests was reinforced in studies by Tschinkel (2004) [10] and Moreira et al., (2004) [11]. ...
... Most ant nests are made up of two fundamental components: a vertical axis and a horizontal chamber. Variations in the quantity, size, shape and order of these fundamental components result in the architectures typical of the species [9]. ...
... Only the Pogonomyrmex badius nest [10] and the Solenopsis invicta nest [ are used as examples in this review, and are shown in Figure 1. With advances in technology, castings of subterranean nests have yielded prec reproductions of the hollow chambers that compose the nests [9]. Tschinkel's 2010 stu described methods and equipment for the development of several different mou materials (including toothpaste, molten aluminium, molten zinc, paraffin wax, etc.), well as their advantages and limitations [17]. ...
This paper discusses the latest progress in research on ant nests and explores innovative scientific concepts associated with underground ant nests from the perspective of bionics. The methods used by scholars to study the structure of ant nests and the interaction between the structure itself and the individual ants are investigated. The structural characteristics of the ant nest, its internal environment and ventilation characteristics are discussed in detail. In addition, this paper presents an innovative project in which the effect of underground ant nests on soil geotechnical properties and the effect of calcined ant nest soil powder, from the perspective of civil engineering, are addressed. Practical examples of the application of the structural and inter-relational aspects of subterranean ant nests in the field of architectural bionics are also provided, from the perspectives of construction, morphology, function and material. This review attempts to integrate civil engineering, architecture and biology, enlighten architects and biologists on converging their thinking, provide new ideas regarding underground ant colony nests, and provide references for long-term human habitation.
... The difference found for C. renggeri nests between different ecosystems indicates that this species is able to modify its nesting behavior in response to resource availability in different environments. Additionally, our findings expand the repertoire of nesting strategies reported for the Camponotus genus (Pfeiffer and Linsenmair 2000;Santos et al. 2005;Tschinkel 2005;Yamamoto & Del-Claro 2008;Santos & Del-Claro 2009). ...
Widespread species face a wide variety of environmental challenges and their morphology, behavior, and natural history may change across their range. However, not rarely, natural history research is restricted to one or few locations. That is the case for Camponotus renggeri and C. rufipes. Both species occur across South America in different ecosystems, but most research on these species is restricted to the Brazilian savanna, known as Cerrado. Here, we describe the foraging area, nesting habits, and activity schedule of C. renggeri and C. rufipes in an Atlantic Forest reserve in SE Brazil. Inferred intraspecific foraging areas of nearby nests overlapped, especially for C. renggeri foraged exclusively during nighttime and C. rufipes remained active throughout the day, but with little intensity during daylight hours. Most nests of both species were composed of dry straw, and average foraging areas were 0.91 m2 for C. renggeri and 1.79 m2 for C. rufipes. C. renggeri. Our findings reinforce the importance of natural history and add to our knowledge on the ecology and behavior of C. renggeri and C. rufipes in Atlantic Forest.
... Therefore, ants are an ideal study system for examining the factors that determine variation in extended phenotypes (Kleineidam and Roces 2000;Penick and Tschinkel 2008). Within ant species, nests differ among colonies in structural features such as number of chambers (Tschinkel 2004;Tschinkel 2005;Verza et al. 2007;Guimarães et al. 2018), total depth (Kleineidam and Roces 2000;Tschinkel 2004;Tschinkel 2005;Guimarães et al. 2018), and connectivity of chambers (Pinter-Wollman 2015). Nest structure also differs across species in their depth and in the number, size, spacing, and connectedness of tunnels and chambers (Sudd 1970;Tschinkel 2011;Tschinkel 2015). ...
... Therefore, ants are an ideal study system for examining the factors that determine variation in extended phenotypes (Kleineidam and Roces 2000;Penick and Tschinkel 2008). Within ant species, nests differ among colonies in structural features such as number of chambers (Tschinkel 2004;Tschinkel 2005;Verza et al. 2007;Guimarães et al. 2018), total depth (Kleineidam and Roces 2000;Tschinkel 2004;Tschinkel 2005;Guimarães et al. 2018), and connectivity of chambers (Pinter-Wollman 2015). Nest structure also differs across species in their depth and in the number, size, spacing, and connectedness of tunnels and chambers (Sudd 1970;Tschinkel 2011;Tschinkel 2015). ...
Behavior is shaped by genes, environment, and evolutionary history in different ways. Nest architecture is an extended phenotype that results from the interaction between the behavior of animals and their environment. Nests built by ants are extended phenotypes that differ in structure among species and among colonies within a species, but the source of these differences remains an open question. To investigate the impact of colony identity (genetics), evolutionary history (species), and the environment on nest architecture, we compared how two species of harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex californicus and Veromessor andrei, construct their nests under different environmental conditions. For each species, we allowed workers from four colonies to excavate nests in environments that differed in temperature and humidity for seven days. We then created casts of each nest to compare nest structures among colonies, between species, and across environmental conditions. We found differences in nest structure among colonies of the same species and between species. Interestingly, however, environmental conditions did not have a strong influence on nest structure in either species. Our results suggest that extended phenotypes are shaped more strongly by internal factors, such as genes and evolutionary history, and are less plastic in response to the abiotic environment, like many physical and physiological phenotypes.
... The architecture of ant nests has been mostly studied in fungus-feeding ants such as Paraponera, Pognomyrmex, Odontomachus, Camponotus, and Ectatomma [30,43]. However, the nest architecture of only a few species of the Pheidole genus has been studied, as is the case of P. oxyops [44]. ...
... However, some nests had a concave top chamber. Deeper ant nests have been found in non-compacted soils with little anthropogenic intervention [43]. The soils examined by Tschinkel [43] did not present high bulk density values, but our rehabilitated sites have a soil layer about 30 cm deep, which could be a limitation to building deeper nests [45]. ...
... Deeper ant nests have been found in non-compacted soils with little anthropogenic intervention [43]. The soils examined by Tschinkel [43] did not present high bulk density values, but our rehabilitated sites have a soil layer about 30 cm deep, which could be a limitation to building deeper nests [45]. Another possible explanation could be related to the size of the colony, although this was not evaluated. ...
Pheidole fallax is one the most abundant ants in sites where coal mines have undergone rehabilitation and in forests without mine intervention. The impact that this species may have as an ecosystem engineer needs to be assessed. We aimed to test whether P. fallax nests have an effect on soil chemical properties, to characterize the organic debris found in the refuse piles, and to describe nest architecture as proxy of the bioturbation effect. The study was carried out in a coal mine in Colombia, in sites with 16 and 20 years of rehabilitation. Samples were taken from inside the nests, from the external refuse pile, and from a control treatment one meter away from the nest. The three sample types were subjected to chemical analysis and near-infrared spectra (NIRS). The biomass of items from the 20-year site was significantly greater, and P. fallax use food resources of different trophic levels, with arthropods and seeds being the main items in their diet. The NIRS analysis enabled us to distinguish the origin of the sample: refuse pile, interior of nest, or control soil. No statistical differences were found between the soil of the nests and control soil. High contents of organic matter and other parameters contributed to the soil nutrient pool through accumulation of organic debris in the refuse piles. Nest molds presented an asymmetric architecture, with mean volume ranging from 30 to 105.7 cm3 and an average of 11.8 chambers per nest. The construction and maintenance of nests may play an important role in the reestablishment of ecological and hydrological processes, such as bioturbation and water infiltration, respectively.
... Examples range from a complex network of galleries excavated in soil or wood cavities to nests made out of leaves woven together (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990). On the one hand, nest size is often related to the size of the colony (Mikheyev and Tschinkel 2004;Tschinkel 1999Tschinkel , 2005. On the other hand, nest shape and topology change depending on the season (Hart and Tschinkel 2012), soil type (Toffin et al. 2010), and ants' body size (Kwapich et al. 2018) as well as the presence of brood or food (Römer and Roces 2014). ...
Nests of social insects are an important area for the exchange of food and information among workers. We investigated how the topology of nest chambers (as opposed to nest size or environmental factors) affects the spatial distribution of nestmates and the foraging behavior of Myrmica rubra ant colonies. Colonies were housed in artificial nests, each with same-sized chambers differing in the spatial arrangement of galleries. A highly connected central chamber favored higher occupancy rates and a more homogeneous distribution of ants across chambers. In contrast, a chain of successive chambers led to a more heterogeneous distribution of ants, with the occupancy of a chamber chiefly mediated by its distance to the entrance. Irrespective of nest topology, the entrance chamber housed the largest proportion of ants, often including the queen, which exhibited a preference for staying in densely populated chambers. Finally, we investigated how nest topology influenced nestmate recruitment. Surprisingly, a highly connected chamber in the center of the nest did not promote greater recruitment nor activation of ants. At the onset of foraging, the largest number of moving ants was reached in the topology where the most connected chamber was the nest entrance. Later in the process, we found that a chain of successive chambers was the best topology for promoting ant’s mobilization. Our work demonstrates that nest topology can shape the spatial organization and the collective response of ant colonies, thereby taking part in their adaptative strategies to exploit environmental resources.
... Life, however, also inhabits subterranean environments. Navigation in these dark constrained conditions (Tschinkel, 2005;Kimchi et al., 2004;Chittka et al., 1999) is far less understood. ...
... What sources of navigational information are accessible inside the ant nest? Gravitational signals may account for an ant colony's organization along the vertical axis (Tschinkel 1999(Tschinkel , 2003(Tschinkel , 2005Tschinkel and Hanley, 2017), whereas magnetic sensation (Anderson and Vander Meer, 1993) could play a similar role in the horizontal direction. Chemical-encoded information is another possible source of navigational cues within the nest. ...
... Ant nests, including the nests of many species in the Camponotus genus, significantly extend in the vertical direction (Tschinkel, 2005); in such nests the earth gravitational pull may serve as an important global orientation cue. To test how ants utilize gravitational cues during intranidal navigation, we constructed an artificial nest that consists of two identical horizontal chambers connected through horizontal corridors to a 45 + angle shaft that leads to the nest entrance ( Figures 6A and 6B). ...
Animal navigation relies on the available environmental cues and, where present, visual cues typically dominate. While much is known about vision-assisted navigation, knowledge of navigation in the dark is scarce. Here, we combine individual tracking, dynamic modular nest structures, and spatially resolved chemical profiling to study how Camponotus fellah ants navigate within the dark labyrinth of their nest. We find that, contrary to ant navigation above ground, underground navigation cannot rely on long-range information. This limitation emphasizes the ants' capabilities associated with other navigational strategies. Indeed, apart from gravity, underground navigation relies on self-referenced memories of multiple locations and on socially generated chemical cues placed at decision points away from the target. Moreover, the ants quickly readjust the weights attributed to these information sources in response to environmental changes. Generally, studying well-known behaviors in a variety of environmental contexts holds the potential of revealing new insights into animal cognition.
... This is also the case for D. bossutus. Of the other species preferring a deep water table, T. septentrionalis and C. socius excavate nests that are rarely more than 1.5 m deep (Tschinkel 2004b;Tschinkel 2005), so their preference for drier sites must have other reasons. The complete nest architectures of P. adrianoi, T. texana, N. arenivaga and S. carolinensis are currently not known. ...
Abstract Longleaf pine savannas are one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world, yet are understudied. Ants are a functionally important and diverse group of insects in these ecosystems. It is largely unknown how local patterns of species diversity and composition are determined through the interaction of this dominant animal group with abiotic features of longleaf pine ecosystems. Here we describe how an important abiotic variable, depth to water table, relates to ant species distributions at local scales. Pitfall trapping studies across habitat gradients in the Florida coastal plains longleaf pine flatwoods showed that the ant community changed with mild differences in habitat. In this undulating landscape, elevation differences were less than 2 m, and the depth to the water table ranged from < 20 cm to 1.2 m. The plant species composing the ground cover were zoned in response to depth to water, and shading by canopy trees increased over deeper water tables. Of the 27 ant species that were analyzed, depending on the statistical test, seven or eight were significantly more abundant over a deep water table, eight to ten over a shallow one, and nine to eleven were not significantly patterned with respect to depth to water. Ant species preferring sites with shallow groundwater also preferred the shadier parts of the sites, while those preferring sites with deeper groundwater preferred the sunnier parts of the sites. This suggests that one group of species prefers hot-dry conditions, and the other cooler-moist. Factor analysis and abundance-weighted mean site characteristics generally confirmed these results. These results show that ant communities in this region respond to subtle differences in habitat, but whether these differences arise from founding preferences, survival, competition, or some combination of these is not known.
... A colony can modify the structure of its nest and choose which nest site it occupies, actively manipulating its environment , but it cannot control other environmental conditions, such as weather. Nest structure emerges from the collective behavior of the workers (Theraulaz et al. 2003) and varies among species (Tschinkel 2011b) and colonies due to age (Tschinkel 2011a) and worker composition (Tschinkel 2005). So worker activity determines the structure of their nest. ...
Environmental conditions and physical constraints both influence an animal's behavior. We investigate whether behavioral variation
among colonies of the black harvester ant, Messor andrei, remains consistent across foraging and disturbance situations and ask whether consistent colony behavior is affected by
nest site and weather. We examined variation among colonies in responsiveness to food baits and to disturbance, measured as
a change in numbers of active ants, and in the speed with which colonies retrieved food and removed debris. Colonies differed
consistently, across foraging and disturbance situations, in both responsiveness and speed. Increased activity in response
to food was associated with a smaller decrease in response to alarm. Speed of retrieving food was correlated with speed of
removing debris. In all colonies, speed was greater in dry conditions, reducing the amount of time ants spent outside the
nest. While a colony occupied a certain nest site, its responsiveness was consistent in both foraging and disturbance situations,
suggesting that nest structure influences colony personality.
... It would also seem that each nest functions as a largely independent unit. Similar polydomy was found in Camponotus socius in which the average colony occupied 2.3 nests (Tschinkel, 2005). ...
A north Florida population of Odontomachus brunneus, a species of ponerine ants, was studied for a one-year period to determine the annual cycle of reproduction and colony growth,
including the foraging biology and seasonal changes in nest architecture. The life cycle of O. brunneus is strongly seasonal. Colonies produce brood for 6 months and are broodless for 6 months. Alates are produced in mixed broods
at the beginning of each season, consuming much of the colony’s energy reserves. These reserves recover slowly through foraging
during the summer’s worker production, and rapidly after brood production ceases in October. The foraging population was estimated
to average 77% (SD 22) of the workforce. This proportion was not related to colony size and female alates were also found
to forage. Nest architecture was found to change seasonally, with winter nests being more than twice as deep as the average
summer nest.
... Detailed information on the threedimensional architecture of insect nests and their distinctly identifiable characteristics, however, is often lacking in these studies (Tschinkel, 2004). Our recognition of fossil ant nests in the Ogallala paleosols is due in large part to recent efforts to document the nest architectures of modern ants by casting them in plaster, metal, and concrete (e.g., Williams and Logfren, 1988;Tschinkel, 2003;Moreira et al., 2004;Tschinkel, 2004Tschinkel, , 2005Forti et al., 2007;Verza et al., 2007;Cerquera and Tschinkel, 2010;Halfen and Hasiotis, 2010;Tschinkel, 2010). Such comparisons are possible because the trace fossils of many soil-dwelling biota do not often differ significantly from the burrows and nests of extant species (e.g., Genise et al., 2000;Hasiotis, 2003;Duringer et al., 2007;Verde et al., 2007;Smith et al., 2008a;Hembree, 2009). ...
Two new ant-nest trace fossils are described from calcic sandy paleosols of the Neogene Ogallala Formation in western Kansas. The ichnofossils are preserved within and below calcrete beds weathering in positive relief as carbonate-filled casts or as cavities in negative relief. Daimoniobarax ichnogenus nov. is established for burrow systems composed of vertically tiered, horizontally oriented pancake-shaped chambers connected by predominantly vertical and cylindrical shafts ~ 0.8 cm in diameter. Ichnospecies of Daimoniobarax are differentiated based on differences in the plan view outline of chambers, shaft orientation, and junctions between chambers and shafts.
