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Data from: Behavioral and hormonal responses to urbanization in ants

Neumann, Kevin1; Hoeferlin, Liam1; Chikoti, Saieshwar1; Frank, Evan1; Plonsker, Johnathan1; Buczkowski, Grzegorz2; Suarez, Andrew1

Published Jul 28, 2025; Updated Jun 08, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdff

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Jul 28, 2025 version files 81.48 KB
Jun 08, 2026 version files 82.71 KB

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Abstract

Urbanization has profound effects on biological communities. Behavioral traits can facilitate adaptation to anthropogenic environments and predict how species might respond to urbanization. We studied the behavior of the odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile) which is common in both forested and urban areas. Relative to forested environments, colonies in urban areas are typically more aggressive and have many more workers and queens. To examine how this variation may influence other behaviors, we compared the exploratory behavior of T. sessile workers and colonies from forested and urban environments. Colonies from forested environments had higher exploration and foraging activity relative to urban colonies. We found repeatable variation in exploratory behavior, suggesting workers have distinct behavioral types. Exploration also varied among ants with different behavioral states - workers that were foraging were more exploratory than workers taken from the nest or that were engaged in a defensive role (i.e. recruited to the location of a different colony). Finally, we identified a potential proximate mechanism that might influence exploration. Treatment with the neuromodulator octopamine led to increased levels of individual exploration and colony level foraging activity for colonies from both habitat types. Together, these results suggest that there may be a relationship between exploratory behavior and adaptation to urbanization. Furthermore, octopamine may play a role in exploratory and foraging behavior in odorous house ants, but further research is needed to better understand this relationship.