abundances, crazy ants may be competitively superior to fire ants in woody habitats
where they manage to become established, but environmental conditions may prevent
them achieving high population densities and displacing fire ants in open areas. Though
further studies would need to be conducted to confirm this hypothesis, there is an
assortment of features of woody habitats that could be important to crazy ant success,
such as thermal conditions, litter structure, and availability of sugar resources like
honeydew produced by sap-feeding insects. Sugar availability in particular may be
important in determining suitable habitat for crazy ants. Argentine ants, which display
many characteristics similar to crazy ants as previously noted, were found to establish
nests in areas where they had not previously been able to invade following the addition of
sucrose feeding stations (Rowles and Silverman 2009). In the case of crazy ants, woody
habitats may provide the environmental conditions and resource availability necessary to
achieve high densities. A large-scale survey of sites invaded by crazy ants as well as
studies examining interactions between fire ants and crazy ants at invasion fronts would
be useful in experimentally testing this hypothesis.
Clearly, the competitive abilities of ants are not tested before they are introduced
to a new range, yet for new introductions that cannot be eradicated, studies examining
competitive interactions between introduced ants and established ants in the introduced
range may be useful. Such studies could help assess the potential invasive risk associated
with different species. In some scenarios, this could aid in the development of a
management plan, whether it be active control of a high risk species, or a more passive
approach for species which are less competitively dominant and may not require the use
of finite resources reserved for invasive species control. Our findings suggest that colony
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