Urban abiotic stressors drive changes in the foraging activity and colony growth of the black garden ant Lasius niger.

Changes in habitat characteristics are known to have profound effects on biotic communities and their functional traits. In the context of an urban-rural gradient, urbanisation drastically alters abiotic characteristics, e.g.

Interspecific attraction between ground-nesting songbirds and ants: the role of nest-site selection.

Background: Interspecific interactions within ecological networks can influence animal fitness and behaviour, including nest-site selection of birds and ants. Previous studies revealed that nesting birds and ants may benefit from cohabitation, with interspecific attraction through their nest-site choice, but mutual interactions have not yet been tested. We explored a previously undescribed ecological link between ground-nesting birds and ants raising their own broods (larvae and pupae) within the birds' nests in a temperate primeval forest of lowland Europe.

Wood ants as biological control of the forest pest beetles Ips spp.

Climate change is one of the major threats to biodiversity, but its impact varies among the species. Bark beetles (Ips spp.), as well as other wood-boring pests of European forests, show escalating numbers in response to the changes driven by climate change and seriously affect the survival of the forests through the massive killing of trees.

Solving a long-standing enigma: Myrmicinosporidium durum belongs to Blastocladiomycota, a phylum of primarily aquatic fungi.

Myrmicinosporidium durumHölldobler (1933) is a widely distributed fungal endoparasite of ants. However, little is known about its biology, ecology, or evolutionary history. Our study investigated the phylogenetics of this entomopathogenic fungus using a molecular approach.

Habitat features and colony characteristics influencing ant personality and its fitness consequences.

Several factors can influence individual and group behavioral variation that can have important fitness consequences. In this study, we tested how two habitat types (seminatural meadows and meadows invaded by plants) and factors like colony and worker size and nest density influence behavioral (activity, meanderness, exploration, aggression, and nest displacement) variation on different levels of the social organization of ants and how these might affect the colony productivity. We assumed that the factors within the two habitat types exert different selective pressures on individual and colony behavioral variation that affects colony productivity.