there was no difference in sugar water recruitment between species in control colonies,
but crazy ants recruited in higher numbers than fire ants in competition colonies (Table
3.1). In contrast to this finding, crazy ants had significantly less mortality than fire ants
in control colonies, but not in competition colonies (Table 3.1, Figure 3.1). This suggests
that fire ants, which experienced heavy mortality in control colonies, were able to inflict a
lot of casualties on crazy ants. Nevertheless, crazy ants had significantly more workers
involved in fights and in the nest box of their competitor than fire ants did (Figure 3.5),
but they did not have significantly more mortality than fire ants. The high aggression but
low mortality for crazy ants is similar to results of aggression assays using 5 workers of
each species (see Chapter 2) and reinforces the findings that aggressive interactions do
not correlate with crazy ant mortality.
Standardizing factor (worker number or biomass) did not significantly affect most
responsible variables, including mortality, resource consumption, and number of ants
fighting (Table 3.1). The one exception was that colonies standardized by biomass,
which had fewer workers than colonies standardized by worker number, had fewer ants
recruiting to both bait types. Additionally, the lack of significant interactions between
species and standardizing factor suggest that a slight crazy ant numerical advantage does
not affect crazy ant recruitment and survival when compared to or competing with fire
ants. In contrast, Morrison (2000) found that S. invicta controlled more baits and
inflicted more mortality on the native fire ant, S. geminata, when colonies were paired by
biomass rather than worker number. Solenopsis geminata workers are much larger than
S. invicta workers (1010 workers per gram compared to 1720 workers per gram),
therefore pairing by biomass gave S. invicta a numerical advantage. However neither
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