Adorning the dead or hiding the ration? The ant Plagiolepis pallescens Forel (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) constructs walls around food items

The ant Plagiolepis pallescens Forel, 1889 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), common to the Middle East (Martinez & Amar 2014; Pashaei Rad et al. 2018), was found to build walls around food items that they were not hoarding, suggesting a concealment behavior. The ants were first discovered to build relatively massive structures under a garden tree, Triadica sebifera, in Givat Ada, Israel, by piling flowers around dead cockroaches. An experiment with eight different colonies of the ant species found that construction materials were not limited to flowers. It is hypothesized that structures built by the ants around food items provide visual and olfactory concealment.

Related Organizations

University of Haifa
Israel

Keywords

foraging, Middle East, etology, ants, Israel, Mediterranean, Hymenoptera, Formicidae, behaviour

Impact byBIP!

	selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).	0
	popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.	Average
	influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).	Average
	impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.	Average