and sugar baits. For both colony sizes, and in both control and competition settings,
crazy ants recruited more quickly and in higher abundances to baits. Crazy ants also
controlled significantly more baits than fire ants did at the end of the experiment. These
results suggest that crazy ants, when evenly matched in colony size with fire ants, are
capable of both discovering baits first and excluding fire ants from them, a combination
of traits that has not been reported in native ants, but has been shown in invasive
Argentine ants (Davidson 1998). To further test these findings, I conducted a field
experiment where small crazy ant colonies were moved from a heavily invaded site to
another location 750m away that had not yet been invaded. I then monitored the ant
recruitment to sugar and protein baits for three weeks. Crazy ants discovered baits more
quickly, but fire ants controlled the majority of baits and recruited to both sugar and
protein in higher abundances than crazy ants. Crazy ant recruitment increased through
time in crazy ant addition locations, but fire ant recruitment decreased in both control and
crazy ant addition locations, suggesting that crazy ants are responding to, rather than
causing, drops in fire ant recruitment.
In sum, the results of Chapters 2 and 3 suggest that crazy ant abundance is likely
an important factor in competitive interactions with fire ants. On an individual level, fire
ants are more successful fighters than crazy ants, but as colony units, crazy ants are more
successful at resource retrieval and engage in more fights without experiencing correlated
mortality when crazy ant and fire ant colonies are of similar size. The field experiment
reinforced this hypothesis, as the small crazy ant colonies did not impact the recruitment
to baits by fire ants from established nests. These findings suggest that fire ants may
provide biotic resistance to crazy ants in areas that do not support high crazy ant