Targeted Sampling Increases Knowledge and Improves
Estimates of Ant Species Richness in Rhode Island
Aaron M. Ellison and Elizabeth J. Farnsworth
Northeastern Naturalist, Volume 21, Issue 1 (2014): NENHC-13—NENHC-24
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Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 21, No. 1
A.M. Ellison and E.J. Farnsworth
2014
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2014 NORTHEASTERN NATURALIST 21(1):NENHC-13–NENHC-24
Targeted Sampling Increases Knowledge and Improves
Estimates of Ant Species Richness in Rhode Island
Aaron M. Ellison1,* and Elizabeth J. Farnsworth2
Abstract - Only 0.7% of 28,205 known New England ant specimens (1861–2011) were
from Rhode Island. Consequently, apparent ant species richness of Rhode Island counties
was lower than expected based on simple biogeographic models. Collections from
two poorly sampled areas—Block Island and Tiverton—and from the 2013 Rhode Island
Natural History Survey’s BioBlitz increased Rhode Island’s ant specimens by 46% and its
ant species richness from 48 to 57. Both Washington and Newport counties now have ant
species richness more in line with New England-wide species-environment predictions.
The extrapolated number of Rhode Island ant species is 66, but the upper bound of the 95%
confidence interval is 93 species and the total species accumulation curve has not reached an
asymptote. Future collection efforts should continue to add ant species to the Rhode Island
list, especially if collections are targeted in the state’s north and southeast regions, and its
southwest pine barrens.
Introduction
The flora and fauna of the New England region—Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine—are better known than
those of any other region of the United States. The combination of early European
settlement, a concentration of academic institutions with taxonomic specialists
and curated collections, many organizations dedicated to conservation and preservation
of species, and a large cadre of dedicated amateur natural historians has
yielded regular publications of regional species lists from the late 1600s (e.g.,
Day 1899, Henshaw 1904–1925) to the present (e.g., Ellison et al. 2012, Haines
2011). At more local scales within New England, however, there is a great deal of
variation in knowledge and collection coverage of different taxonomic groups.
Our regional knowledge of the New England myrmecofauna—the ants—provides
a notable case in point.
Two regional summaries bracket our contemporary knowledge of the ants of
New England (Ellison et al. 2012, Wheeler 1906). Wheeler (1906) listed 84 ant
taxa (species, subspecies, varieties), whereas Ellison et al. (2012) listed 132 species
for the six New England states. County records in 2012 ranged from only four
records (and two species) in Newport County, RI to 5475 records (66 species) in
York County, ME. Although there are four or more specimens from every county
in New England, there are many gaps in town-level collections. For example, in
1Harvard University, Harvard Forest, 324 North Main Street, Petersham, MA 01366. 2New
England Wild Flower Society, 180 Hemenway Road, Framingham, MA 01701.*Corresponding
author - aellison@fas.harvard.edu.
Manuscript Editor: Howard S. Ginsberg
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Massachusetts, which alone accounts for 67% of the >28,000 specimen records
collated by Ellison et al. (2012), there are no ant specimen records from 172 of the
state’s 351 towns.
Far less is known about the ant fauna of Rhode Island than the other five New
England states. Wheeler (1906) listed only 12 species for Rhode Island, each represented
by only a single record (except Formica integra, which had been collected
twice by 1906), and all but two of these specimens had been collected from Providence
(the other two were listed as being from Newport and Kingston). Over one
hundred years later, only 195 more specimens (for a total of 208) had been recorded
from Rhode Island, representing 21 of its 39 towns (Fig. 1A). These records comprised
0.7% of all the total historical specimen records (1861–2011) known from
New England and summarized by Ellison et al. (2012). However, these few Rhode
Island specimens included 48 species (Fig. 1B), or 36% of the regional total. The
extrapolated (Chao1) estimate of the total species richness (Chao et al. 2014) for
Rhode Island in 2011 was 62, but this was assuredly an underestimate, as the cumulative
number of known species for Rhode Island had shown no sign of reaching an
asymptote (Fig. 1B).
Ant species richness increases from the boreal forests to the equator (e.g., Dunn
et al. 2009) and, similarly, from northern to southern latitudes in New England
(Gotelli and Ellison 2002); the strongest environmental factor associated with this
gradient is mean annual temperature (e.g., Dunn et al. 2009, Sanders et al. 2007).
Ellison et al. (2012) illustrated that county-level species richness of ants in New
England could be reasonably well predicted by latitude and average annual temperature.
Rhode Island is situated near the southernmost latitude of New England; the
relatively low elevations, modest topography, and relatively high average annual
temperatures in the state suggest that Rhode Island should have many more species
than current data indicate (Fig. 2).
Figure 1 (following page). Collection frequency, species accumulation curve, and rarefaction
and extrapolation curves of the ants of Rhode Island. A. Map of Rhode Island, showing
numbers of specimens collected in each town through 2013; the geographic coordinates in
the margins indicate the geographic center of the state. Light gray circles indicate numbers
of specimens collected in each town, and dark gray circles indicate 2012−2013 collections.
The solid triangle indicates the location of the University of Rhode Island, and Block Island
is at the bottom of the map. B. Decadal species accumulation curve for Rhode Island ants.
The dotted line connects the historical specimen records (ca. 1900−2009) to the 2012−2013
collections. C. Rarefied species accumulation curves as a function of the number of
specimens collected for historical specimen records (dotted line) and all specimen records
through 2013 (solid line). Each curve shows the expected number of species for a given
number of specimens collected, and the limits of the shaded areas around the curves are the
95% confidence bounds for each curve based on 100 randomizations. The solid squares to
the right of the curves give the predicted species richness (gray–historical data; black–all
data including 2012 and 2013 data); the vertical lines are the 95% confidence intervals of
these predictions based on the Chao1 estimator (Chao et al. 2014).
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Here, we use three sets of new specimen records collected in 2012 and 2013
from four localities in Rhode Island to test the relationships illustrated by the
regression lines in Figure 2. If the relationships shown in Figure 2 are reliable, we
would predict that previously poorly sampled counties and the southernmost extent
of Rhode Island should show dramatic increases in the number of species occurrences,
whereas the one previously well-sampled county—Washington County in
southwest Rhode Island—should show a smaller increase in the number of new species
recorded. We also use the new data to update the species accumulation curve
for Rhode Island (Fig. 1B), and provide a new estimate of the expected ant species
richness for the state (Fig. 1C).
Figure 2. Relationships
between ant
species richness per
county in New England
and either (A)
latitude or (B) mean
annual temperature
at the county centroid
derived from
WorldClim (Hijmans
et al. 2005).
White symbols are
pre-2012 data from
New England counties
not in Rhode
Island; pre-2012
data from Rhode
Island counties are
indicated by solid
gray symbols;
and new data for
Washington and
Newport Counties
are shown in solid
black symbols. The
lines (dashed gray =
historical relationship;
solid black =
based on new data)
are the best-fit local
regressions through
all of the data. Figure
modified from
Fig. 6.6 of Ellison
et al. (2012).
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Methods
Historical data on Rhode Island ant diversity and distribution were extracted
from the ants of New England dataset (Ellison and Gotelli 2009) that were summarized
in Ellison et al. (2012). New England specimens in this dataset were collected
between 1861 and 2011, but Rhode Island specimens are known from ca. 1900
(undated records in Wheeler [1906]; the first certain date of a Rhode Island ant
specimen—Camponotus pennsylvanicus (Eastern Carpenter Ant)—is 22 August
1906) to 2009.
New Rhode Island collections were made in 2012 and 2013 (Table 1). In 2012,
we collected ants across Block Island (focused collections from 11–13 July; additional
collections throughout July) and at Barton Woods and the Revolutionary
War redoubt at Fort Barton in Tiverton (14 July). In 2013, ants were collected on
June 7–8 at the South County Museum in Narragansett during the annual BioBlitz
of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey. Block Island was chosen for sampling
because it is one of the southernmost locations in New England, only seven previous
specimens had been collected there (all in 1971 by Edward Goldstein), and
because earlier studies of the ant fauna of New England’s off-shore islands had
revealed unexpectedly high numbers of species (Goldstein 1975, Ellison 2012).
Barton Woods and Fort Barton were chosen for sampling because it is in Newport
County, the county for which there were the fewest historical specimen records (4)
for all of Rhode Island or elsewhere in New England. Both Block Island and Barton
Woods also have a range of different habitats in a small area.
Table 1. Rhode Island localities sampled during 2012 and 2013. Coordinates are decimal degrees
North and West.
Location Latitude Longitude # of specimens # of species
Block Island
North Light 41.22756 −71.57577 2 2
Clay Head 41.20857 −71.56125 15 9
Grace’s Cove Beach 41.18295 −71.60278 11 7
Sachem Pond 41.18216 −71.58499 8 8
West Side Road Bog 41.18105 −71.58492 3 3
The Nature Conservancy Office 41.16969 −71.55807 4 3
Nathan Mott Park 41.16907 −71.58424 15 7
Turnip Farm 41.16816 −71.59193 32 11
Dodge Cemetery 41.16640 −71.59641 1 1
Fort Barton and Barton Woods
Edge of vernal pool 41.62698 −71.19828 5 4
Upland oak-hickory woodland 41.62654 −71.19550 6 4
Floodplain forest 41.62628 −71.19471 11 8
Cemetery wall 41.62562 −71.20684 1 1
Redoubt tower 41.62537 −71.20695 19 11
Mixed woodland 41.62537 −71.19629 19 10
Area of nonnative plants 41.62498 −71.20541 5 4
South County Museum
Canonchet Farm 41.43858 −71.46060 13 13
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On Block Island, we sampled ants at nine locations (Table 1). Habitats sampled
included beaches and dunes (North Light, Clay Head, Grace’s Cove Beach), wetlands
(West Side Road Bog and the shoreline of Sachem Pond), deciduous forests
(Clay Head, Nathan Mott Park), open fields (Turnip Farm), and anthropogenically
maintained sites (Dodge Cemetery, the grounds of The Nature Conservancy’s Nature
Center). Geographic coordinates of all collection locations were taken with a
Garmin hand-held GPS (Garmin International, Inc., Olathe, KS).
At each of these locations, we slowly walked on and off trails within a 75- x
75-m area centered on the trail for at least one person-hour and collected representative
workers from any ant colonies we encountered. We turned over rocks, opened
up decayed logs and stumps, dug into anthills and ant mounds, and gleaned from
foliage, branches, and trunks. This method of timed hand-sampling accumulates far
more species than baiting or pitfall trapping (Ellison et al. 2007). We also collected
four 1-L litter samples from random locations within the plot, sieved them in the
field (1/8″-mesh), and collected all ants we extracted from the sieved lit ter.
Additional ant samples were collected as “by-catch” during a month-long (July
2012), drag-sheet survey for deer ticks conducted by Casey Finch and Patrick
O’Shea (Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT). GPS coordinates for individual
drag sheets, each deployed once and checked within one hour, are given in
Table 2. Any ants that accumulated on the sheets were collected and sent to us for
identification.
At Barton Woods, we collected ants at the historic fort site and adjacent cemetery,
and then along the “Red Trail” in five different habitats: areas dominated by
nonnative plants, an upland oak-hickory woodland, the floodplain forest adjacent to
Sin and Flesh Brook, the edge of a vernal pool dominated by Sphagnum mosses, and
Table 2. Coordinates (decimal degrees) of locations on Block Island where individual drag sheets
were deployed and from which ant by-catch was collected.
Latitide Longitude Number of specimens Number of species
41.15649 -71.60700 2 2
41.15812 -71.58926 3 3
41.15824 -71.56432 2 2
41.15904 -71.55457 1 1
41.17593 -71.56686 1 1
41.17702 -71.59243 2 2
41.17793 -71.54173 1 1
41.17796 -71.56474 1 1
41.18596 -71.58641 1 1
41.18952 -71.56837 1 1
41.20129 -71.56573 1 1
41.20254 -71.56388 3 3
41.20740 -71.55980 1 1
41.20761 -71.56600 1 1
41.20796 -71.56068 1 1
41.21600 -71.56100 1 1
41.58240 -71.56432 1 1
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the mixed woodland at the northeast junction of the Red and Blue trails (Table 1).
As we had done at Block Island, we searched for and collected ants by hand from
nests in each habitat for approximately 1 person-hour, and then sieved four 1-L litter
samples and extracted ants from the sieved litter in the fie ld.
The Rhode Island Natural History Survey’s BioBlitz occurs each year at different
locations. The 2013 BioBlitz was intended to sample throughout the town
of Narragansett. However, because of the simultaneous occurrence of Tropical
Storm Andrea, pitfall traps were washed out, and only opportunistic samples from
the Canonchet Farm property at the South County Museum were hand-collected
(Table 1).
We identified all ants to species using keys in Ellison et al. (2012). As in Ellison
et al. (2012), we performed local regression analysis using the loess function in
R version 3.0.1 (R Development Core Team 2013). Regressors used were latitude
and mean annual temperature at the county centroid derived from WorldClim (Hijmans
et al. 2005). The Chao1 estimator of species richness (Chao et al. 2014) was
computed using the species diversity module (for both rarefaction and extrapolation)
in EstimateS version 9 (Colwell 2013). Raw data are available in the ants of
New England dataset of the Harvard Forest data archive (http://harvardforest.fas.
harvard.edu/data-archive), dataset HF147. Voucher specimens are stored in the
Harvard Forest sample archive.
Results
We accumulated 108 new specimen records (nests + samples from litter) from
Block Island, 61 new specimen records from Tiverton, and 11 new specimen records
from the South County Museum. These 180 records increased the total number
of specimen records for Rhode Island by 46% and added nine new species to
the current list of Rhode Island ants (Table 3; Figs. 1B, C).
On Block Island, we collected 18 species. All seven of the species collected by
Goldstein in 1971 (Tapinoma sessile, Lasius alienus, Lasius neoniger, Aphaenogaster
rudis, Crematogaster cerasi, Myrmica americana, and Tetramorium caespitum)
were re-collected in 2012, along with 11 others (Table 3). Six of these—Lasius pallitarsis,
Aphaenogaster fulva, Monomorium emarginatum, Myrmica punctiventris,
an undescribed species of Myrmica (denoted Myrmica sp. AF-scu), and Solenopsis
molesta—were new records for Washington County. Of these six species, all but
Monomorium emarginatum and Myrmica americana (both previously collected in
Providence) also were new state records. Of additional note, only one of Block Island’s
known ants is nonnative (Tetramorium caespitum [Pavement Ant]). Myrmica
rubra (European Fire Ant), which has been collected from the mainland coastal
city of Newport, has not yet been found on Block Island. Curiously, despite the
abundance of dead trees, downed limbs, and firewood, we found no carpenter ants
(Camponotus species) on Block Island. Several long-time island residents and local
naturalists also reported never having seen carpenter ants on Block Island.
At Fort Barton and in Barton Woods, we collected 22 species, but did not find the
two species previously collected in the county (Dolichoderus plagiatus and Myrmica
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rubra). Therefore, all of these 22 species (Table 3) were new county records for
Newport County. Three species were new state records (Formica neogagates, Lasius
Table 3 (below and continued on page 9). Checklist of the ants of Rhode Island. Species names in
bold were listed in Wheeler (1906). Superscripts indicate new state records since the publication
of Ellison et al. (2012): †Collected on Block Island (Washington County), July 2012; ‡Collected at
Barton Woods, Tiverton (Newport County), July 2012; *Collected at the South County Museum, Narragansett
(Washington County) during the 2013 Rhode Island Natural History Survey BioBlitz. Prov.
= Providence, Wash. = Washington.
County
Species Bristol Kent Newport Prov. Wash.
Amblyoponinae
Stigmatomma pallipes (Haldeman, 1844) √
Ponerinae
Ponera pennsylvanica Buckley, 1866 √ √
Dolichoderinae
Dolichoderus plagiatus (Mayr, 1870) √ √
Dolichoderus pustulatus Mayr, 1886 √
Tapinoma sessile (Say, 1836) √ √
Formicinae
Camponotus americanus Mayr, 1862 √
Camponotus castaneus (Latreille, 1802) √
Camponotus chromaiodes Bolton, 1995 √
Camponotus nearcticus Emery, 1893 √ √
Camponotus novaeboracensis (Fitch, 1855) √ √ √
Camponotus pennsylvanicus (DeGeer, 1773) √ √ √ √ √
Formica argentea Wheeler, 1902 √
Formica dolosa Buren, 1944 √ √
Formica exsectoides Forel, 1886 √
Formica impexa Wheeler, 1905 √ √
Formica incerta Buren, 1944 √
Formica integra Nylander, 1856 √ √
‡Formica neogagates Viereck, 1903 √
Formica obscuriventris Mayr, 1870 √ √
Formica pallidefulva Latreille, 1802 √ √
Formica pergandei Emery, 1893 √ √
Formica querquetulana Kennedy & Dennis, 1937 √
Formica subaenescens Emery, 1893 √ √
Formica subintegra Wheeler, 1908 √ √
Formica subsericea Say, 1836 √ √ √
Lasius alienus (Foerster, 1850) √ √ √ √
Lasius claviger (Roger, 1862) √ √
Lasius interjectus Mayr, 1866 √
Lasius latipes (Walsh, 1963) √
‡Lasius nearcticus Wheeler, 1906 √
Lasius neoniger Emery, 1893 √
†Lasius pallitarsis (Provancher, 1881) √
Lasius speculiventris Emery, 1893 √
Lasius umbratus (Nylander, 1846) √ √ √
Nylanderia parvula (Mayr, 1870) √
Prenolepis imparis (Say, 1836) √
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nearcticus, and Stenamma impar), and three others had been collected previously in
Rhode Island only during the previous days’ sampling on Block Island (Aphaenogaster
fulva, Myrmica punctiventris, and Solenopsis molesta).
Among the 11 species collected during the 2013 BioBlitz at the South County
Museum (Table 3), two were new state and Washington County records (Aphaenogaster
picea, Myrmica incompleta).
Based on all Rhode Island collection records available to us through June 2013,
we now estimate that there are 66 ant species in the state with a 95% confidence
interval = [59–93]. Including the new collection data in the regression analyses
predicting number of ant species per county as a function of latitude (F1,65 = 9.87,
P = 0.003) or mean annual temperature (F1,65 = 12.12, P = 0.0009) brought Washington
County and Newport County more in line with expectation with the rest of
New England (the residual sums of squares decreased by 5% in both cases with the
inclusion of the new collection data), but did not significantly change the shape of
the relationship between these variables and ant species richness (Fig. 2).
Discussion
Targeted field collecting of ants in Rhode Island yielded new state and county
records and supported a regression model relating county-level ant species
richness to geographic and climatic variables. These results suggest that additional
collecting focused on historically under-sampled areas in Rhode Island,
Table 3, continued.
County
Species Bristol Kent Newport Prov. Wash.
Myrmicinae
Aphaenogaster fulva Roger, 1863 √ √
*Aphaenogaster picea (Wheeler, 1908) √
Aphaenogaster rudis (s.l.) Enzmann, 1947 √ √
Aphaenogaster treatae Forel, 1886 √
Crematogaster cerasi (Fitch, 1855) √ √
Crematogaster lineolata (Say, 1836) √ √
Monomorium emarginatum DuBois, 1986 √ √
Monomorium viridum Brown, 1943 √
Myrmecina americana Emery, 1895 √
Myrmica americana Weber, 1939 √ √
*Myrmica incompleta Provancher, 1881 √
†,‡,*Myrmica punctiventris Roger, 1863 √ √
Myrmica rubra (L., 1758) √
†Myrmica sp. AF-scu √
Myrmica sp. AF-smi √ √
†,‡Solenopsis molesta (Say, 1836) √ √
‡Stenamma impar Forel, 1901 √
Temnothorax curvispinosus (Mayr, 1866) √ √
Temnothorax longispinosus (Roger, 1863) √ √
Temnothorax schaumi (Roger, 1863) √
Tetramorium caespitum (L., 1758) √ √
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as well as elsewhere in New England, can rapidly increase our knowledge of the
region’s myrmecofauna.
Five days of ant collecting nearly doubled the number of Rhode Island ant specimens
(from 208 to 388), increased the number of ant species known from the state
by nearly 20% (from 48 to 57), and increased the expected number of Rhode Island
ant species from 62 to 66 while decreasing the uncertainty (width of the confidence
interval) of that estimate by 25% (Fig. 2). However, the current upper limit of the
95% confidence interval is 93 species, and the species accumulation curve shows
no sign of reaching an asymptote (Fig. 1B), so these results imply that future collection
efforts will almost assuredly continue to add ant species to the Rhode Island
list relatively quickly. It is also noteworthy that only two nonnative ants—Myrmica
rubra and Tetramorium caespitum—are currently known from Rhode Island. Other
temperate-zone nonnatives are likely to be found in urban areas (cf. Pećarević et al.
2010), and tropical tramps are likely to be found in houses, greenhouses, and commercial
buildings that are heated year-round (Ellison et al. 2012). Searching for ants
in these “non-traditional” settings—urban areas and indoors—could easily detect
nonnative species in Rhode Island.
Opportunities to involve citizen scientists, such as the annual BioBlitz of the
Rhode Island Natural History Survey, also are likely to pay off with new state records
and the concomitant excitement generated by such discoveries. We encourage
future structured collecting and educational BioBlitzes to focus attention on poorly
collected towns and counties: there are fewer than 10 records each from Bristol and
Kent counties, and only 15 from Providence County. These counties have habitats
ranging from urban to rural and wooded to open, all of which could yield new species
records for the state. New records can be added to our database through the
Ants of New England website: http://NEants.net. We note that we were unable to
assess relationships between species richness and habitat type in Rhode Island because
most of the historical specimen labels lacked habitat data. As we accumulate
more data, however, we will be able to better assess these relationships as we have
done for the broader New England region (Ellison 2012, Ellison et al. 2012).
The new data from Rhode Island also strengthened our confidence in relatively
simple regression models that predict ant species richness from easy-to-measure
variables such as latitude and mean annual temperature (Fig. 2). The other Rhode
Island counties are still “outliers” in these species-environment spaces (grey circles
in Fig. 2), again emphasizing that targeted ant collecting in northern and southeastern
Rhode Island (i.e., the un-sampled towns in Fig. 1) should be a priority. At the
same time, even though Washington County is comparatively well sampled, the
vast majority of the historical specimens are from around the University of Rhode
Island’s Kingston campus (solid triangle in Fig. 1A), and after our 2012 collecting
forays, more than half of the total specimens are from Block Island. Other habitats
in Washington County include pine barrens and extensive wetlands, both of which
have unique ants. Pine barrens in particular have very diverse ant assemblages
(Boyd and Marucci 1979) and have more ant species than any other habitat in New
England (Ellison et al. 2012). In short, there is still much to learn about the Rhode
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Island myrmecofauna, and there are many opportunities to contribute to biodiversity
studies right here in the northeast.
Acknowledgments
Collecting on Block Island was permitted by The Nature Conservancy, which also provided
housing and logistics support there. We thank Scott Comings and Charlotte Herring
for their help with organization, logistics, and maps, and Michael Bowie, Charles Akin,
Quintavious Lowe, Derrick Evans (participants in The Nature Conservancy’s “Leaders in
Environmental Action for the Future” program), Casey Finch, and Patrick O’Shea (Yale
School of Public Health), who helped collect ants on Block Island. Collecting at Fort Barton
was permitted by Garry Plunkett and the Tiverton Open Space and Land Preservation
Committee. Dave Lubertazzi, Norm Dudziak, Nate Hains, and Bob Smith collected ants
during the 2013 BioBlitz in Narragansett and shared their findings with us. Brian Hall
converted GIS shape files into formats usable in the R software package. These results
were presented at the 2013 Northeast Natural History Conference, and we thank members
of the audience for perceptive questions that improved this final presentation. We also
thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Howard Ginsberg, for helpful comments
on the manuscript. Our research on ants is supported by the Department of Energy (grant
DE-FG02-08ER64510) and the National Science Foundation’s Dimensions of Biodiversity
Program (grant 1136646).
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