The name is absent

tradeoff. However, more recent studies have shown that some invasive ant species can
break this trade-off in their introduced range and can both discover and dominate baits
(Davidson 1998). Therefore, examining the colony-level competitive interactions of
crazy ants and fire ants both in the laboratory and in the field may lead to new insight into
the community role of crazy ants in their introduced range, and more specifically,
whether crazy ants break the dominance-discovery trade-off.

Our experimental design allowed us to ask the following questions: 1) Are fire
ants or crazy ants more successful in colony-level interactions? 2) Does relative
abundance of crazy ants affect the outcome of colony-level interactions? 3) Do crazy ants
follow the dominance-discovery tradeoff? and 4) Do crazy ants fill the same role in the
dominance-discovery tradeoff in field conditions when they are much less abundant than
fire ants? The answers to these questions may lead to a greater understanding of the
Rasberry crazy ant introduction, as well as the ability to better predict the future of
Rasberry crazy ant populations in their introduced range. More importantly, these
questions examine whether fire ants, an well-established invasive species, can provide
biotic resistance to the spread of the newly introduced crazy ants.

Methods

Colony-level competition

All ants used in this experiment were from field-collected, polygynous colonies.
Paratrechina sp. xs.pubens colonies were collected in Pearland, TX (29.55⁰N, 95.28⁰W)
on May 24 and May 31,2008. Solenopsis invicta colonies were collected in Katy, TX
(29.93^oN, 95.94^oW) in early May 2008. After separating ants from the nesting material

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