Influence of the amount of food resources in the foraging behavior of Nasutitermes corniger (Motschulsky)

Food scarcity or abundance are factors regulating termites’ foraging behavior in general. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the influence of four amounts of Eucalyptus grandis on foraging behavior events shown by worker and soldier of Nasutitermes corniger during laboratory tests. The tests were carried out with adult and active N. corniger colonies found in nests collected in the field, which were stored in glass cubes connected to the test arenas. Four different amounts of wood blocks were used in the tests and each amount concerned a treatment and defined a different experimental group: 1, 2, 3 and 4 blocks/arenas, with 5 repetitions. Each test lasted 60 minutes and consisted in observing, or not, the occurrence of behavioral events shown by foragers when they had contact with the treatment. The duration of each event was recorded, whenever it was observed. The number of recruited foragers and the number of workers consuming the blocks were recorded at the end of each test applied to each treatment. Nasutitermes corniger presented the three behavioral events in all treatments; however, there was not significant difference between treatments in the occurrence of the two first events, in the time taken from test start to the occurrence of a new event, in the number of recruited termites and in the number of gnawing workers. Only workers’ mass recruiting was influenced by the amount of wood available. The occurrence of this event was significantly higher in treatments with greater amounts of wood. Thus, N. corniger adjusts its mass recruitment behavior in response to available food amount, which should be considered when developing baiting system for its control.

Model-Based and Design-Based Inference: Reducing Bias Due to Differential Recruitment in Respondent-Driven Sampling

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS), a link-tracing sampling and inference method for studying hard-to-reach populations, has been shown to produce asymptotically unbiased population estimates when its assumptions are satisfied. However, some of the assumptions are prohibitively difficult to reach in the field, and the violation of a crucial assumption can produce biased estimates. We compare two different inference approaches: design-based inference, which relies on the known probability of selection in sampling, and model-based inference, which is based on models of human recruitment behavior and the social context within which sampling is conducted. The advantage of the latter approach is that when the violation of an assumption has been shown to produce biased population estimates, the model can be adjusted to more accurately reflect actual recruitment behavior, and thereby control for the source of bias. To illustrate this process, we focus on three sources of bias, differential effectiveness of recruitment, a form of nonresponse bias, and bias resulting from status differentials that produce asymmetries in recruitment behavior. We first present diagnostics for identifying types of bias and then present new forms of a model-based RDS estimator that controls for each type of bias. In this way, we show the unique advantages of a model-based estimator.

Decayed Wood Affecting the Attraction of the Pest Arboretum Termite Nasutitermes corniger (Isoptera: Termitidae) to Resource Foods

Nasutitermes corniger shows preferential feeding for the wood of different tree species, but it is not known whether attractiveness is a function of the state of decay. This study examined the foraging behavior of N. corniger towards wood in different stages of decay. Wood was exposed to weather for durations of 0, 3, 6 or 9 months. Then the wood was placed in a standard foraging arena with termites. Exploration and recruitment behavior were recorded for 1 h. Separate bioassays were conducted for three species: Pinus elliottii, Eucalyptus grandis and Manilkara huberi. In the tests with P. elliottii and E. grandis, more individuals were recruited to wood decayed for 6 months (191 and 185, respectively) than to undecayed wood (12 and 69, respectively). Similarly, more individuals were recruited to decayed M. huberi wood than undecayed, but only after 9 months (249 and 7, respectively). Decayed wood has therefore been demonstrated to be more attractive to N. corniger than undecayed wood. The different decomposition rates necessary to increase attractiveness may be explained by differences in wood density.

Does body size of neotropical ant species influence their recruitment speed?

Ants are one of the most important animal groups in tropical forests because of its abundance and number of species. An important characteristic of the group is the eusociality, which allows the occurrence of a recruitment behavior when food resource is found. However, there are two main questions regarding this behavior: (i) the recruitment is a product of environmental or phylogenetic pressures, and (ii) the recruitment speed is related to the body size of the ant species. In this work we addressed these two questions using 17 species of neotropical ants, in the Amazonic lowland dense rain forest. According to results, recruitment behavior is related to ant size, where smaller species exhibit this trait when finding a protein resource. However, species size is not important in recruitment speed, which suggests that speed can be best explained by the type of food resources needed in the ant colony.

Seed Dormancy and Seedling Recruitment in Smooth Barley (Hordeum murinum ssp. glaucum) Populations in Southern Australia

Weedy barley species have emerged as important weeds in southern Australia, where they can be particularly difficult to control in cereal crops. Knowledge of seed dormancy mechanisms, germination ecology, and recruitment behavior in the field would facilitate development of effective weed-control programs for these weed species. Based on somatic chromosome number, smooth barley was identified as the species infesting all the sites sampled in South Australia. Smooth barley populations from cropping fields and noncrop habitats showed large differences in their pattern of dormancy loss. Noncrop populations (EP2, EP3, and MN2) rapidly lost dormancy during dry after-ripening and showed 70 to 95% germination at 3 mo after maturity. Five populations collected from cropping fields (EP1, EP4, EP5, MN1, and MN3), on the other hand, showed < 30% germination, even at 8 mo after maturity, when germination was assessed at 20/12 C day/night temperatures. These dormant, smooth barley populations from cropping fields were found to be highly responsive to cold stratification, with germination increasing in response to the duration of the treatment. Germination of dormant, smooth barley populations increased with the addition of gibberellic acid (0.001 M GA3), but only when lemma and palea had been removed. Recruitment behavior of smooth barley in the field was influenced by the population and the tillage system. A nondormant population, collected from a long-term pasture (MN2), showed high seedling emergence (> 90%) during autumn, which was well before planting of the winter crop (lentil). In contrast, the other three populations sampled from cropping fields showed very little seedling establishment (< 10%) before crop planting, which would make them difficult to control in cereals because there are no selective herbicides available for the control of weedy barley species. There was a significant seeding system by emergence time interaction (P < 0.001), which was reflected in greater in-crop, smooth barley plant densities under zero-till than under conventional tillage and no-till systems.

Dynamics of Foraging and Recruitment Behavior in the Asian Subterranean TermiteCoptotermes gestroi(Rhinotermitidae)

The present study investigated the trail-following behavior of the subterranean termiteCoptotermes gestroi(Wasmann Rhinotermitidae) under laboratory conditions. The results showed that workers were the first to initiate the exploration to the food source. When food was discovered they returned to the nest laying a trail for recruiting nestmates to the food source. In this situation, workers always traveled significantly faster when returning from the arenas. Both workers and soldiers were recruited to the food source; however, the soldier/worker proportion was higher during the first phase of the recruitment. When no food was available, the number of recruited nestmates and the speed on their way back to the nest were significantly lower. The results also showed that scout foragers always laid trail pheromones when entering into unknown territories, and that chemical signals found in the food could induce workers ofC. gestroito increase their travel speed.