Banca de DEFESA: MATHEUS BASTOS COSTA CHAVES

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : MATHEUS BASTOS COSTA CHAVES
DATE: 24/05/2024
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: Virtual
TITLE:

COLONIAL FOOD PREFERENCE OF Odontomachus haematodus Linnaeus, 1758 (HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE) IN A LABORATORY ENVIRONMENT

 

KEY WORDS:

Ant; food preference; foraging; recruitment.

PAGES: 47
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Psicologia
SUBÁREA: Psicologia Comparativa
SPECIALTY: Estudos Naturalísticos do Comportamento Animal
SUMMARY:

Ants, who are amongst eusocial insects, are notorious for their task allocation. One of
those activities is foraging, which consists in the exploration of the surroundings of the nest,
hunting or gathering of food items and transport of this resource back to the nest to share it
with nestmates. This activity is based on two main strategies, solitary or group foraging, and
can occur under various means of orientation, such as guided by visual, chemical or temporal
cues, with different diets and food preferences. With that, this dissertation had as its objective
to investigate, by the means of food offering experiments, with different varieties and
quantities of food, the selectiveness of the species Odontomachus haematodus in relation to
its diet and food collection mechanisms in a laboratory setting. This species is a member of a
genus in which other species have been witnessed having a clear preference for a specific
food source. Apart from food preference, we aim to evaluate the possibility of recruitment by
Odontomachus haematodus, as primitive forms of this behavior have been noted in other
species in its genus and more complex forms in a few other ponerines, apart from the
possibility of the species executing cooperative transport of food. Our results indicate a clear
preference for food items rich in liquids and a lesser preference for a carnivorous diet than we
expected, with a natural variability between the colonies. Furthermore, we did not observe
occurrences of recruitment of nestmates nor cooperative food transport.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1149552 - ARRILTON ARAUJO DE SOUZA
Externa à Instituição - JENIFFER DA CÂMARA MEDEIROS - UFRN
Externa à Instituição - RONARA DE SOUZA FERREIRA CHÂLINE - UFES