Home Range Orientation and Territoriality in Harvesting Ants

Abstract

Trunk trails, used by Pogonomyrmex barbatus and P. rugosus during foraging and homing, have the effect of avoiding aggressive confrontations between neighboring colonies of the same species. They channel the mass of foragers of hostile neighboring nests into diverging directions, before each ant pursues its individual foraging exploration. This channeling subtly partitions the foraging grounds and allows a much denser nest spacing pattern than a foraging strategy without trunk trails, such as that employed by P. maricopa.