The Effects of Increasing Temperature on Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera:Formicidae)
Abstract
This experiment focuses on the Solenopsis invicta’s ability to withstand increasing temperatures in a dry, arid environment and determining the highest temperature that it would be possible for them to survive without the protection of an underground mound. Forty organisms were collected and separated in half, one being the control group and the other being the test group. The test organisms were then placed into a commercial food dehydrator and temperature was gradually increased. The behaviors of the organisms were noted as each increase in temperature took place. The lowest temperature that a change was observed was at 115°F and the highest temperature found that a fire ant could withstand was 125°F. The majority of change occurred at 120°F. At this temperature, 90% of the test ants became motionless and died. These results demonstrate the importance of the complex nests that fire ants build underground in order to regulate their temperatures.
References
Asano, E. and D. L. Cassill."Impact of Worker Longevity and Other Endogenous Factors on Colony Size in the Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta". Insectes Sociaux. (Impact Factor: 1.33). 01/2011; 58(4):551-557.
Cassill, Derby Lee, Walter R. Tschinkel, and Bradleigh S. Vinson. Nest complexity, group size and brood rearing in the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Insectes Sociaux. (Impact Factor:1.33). 01/2022; 49:158-163.
Penick CA, Tschinkel WR (2008) "Thermoregulatory Brood Transport in the Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta". Insectes Sociaux. 55:176-182.
Poter, Sandra D. and Walter R. Tschinkel. "Fire Ant Thermal Preferences: Behavioral Control of Growth and Metabolism". USDA, Agricultural Research Service; Florida State University Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. (Impact Factor: 2.75). 01/1993; 32(5):321-329.
Porter, Sandra D. and Walter R. Tschinkel. Foraging in Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Effects of Weather and Season. Environmental Entomology. (Impact Factor: 1.31). 05/1987; 16(3):802-808.
Ross, Kenneth G. and David J. C. Fletcher. "Genetic Origin of Male Diploidy in the Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), and its Evolutionary Significance." Evolution. Vol. 39, No. 4 (July, 1985), pp. 888-903.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Instars supports the need for authors to share, disseminate and maximise the impact of their research. We take our responsibility as stewards of the online record seriously, and work to ensure our policies and procedures help to protect the integrity of scholarly works.
License to the Journal. The Author hereby licenses to the Journal the irrevocable, nonexclusive, and royalty-free rights as follows:
a. The Journal may publish the Article in any format, including electronic and print media. Specifically, this license include the right to reproduce, publicly distribute and display, and transmit the Article or portions thereof in any manner, through any medium now in existence or developed in the future, including but not limited to print, electronic, and digital media, computerized retrieval systems, and other formats
b. The Journal may prepare translations and abstracts and other similar adaptations of the Article in furtherance of its publication of the Article.
c. The Journal may use the Author's name, likeness, and institutional affiliation in connection with any use of the Article and in promoting the Article or the Journal.
d. The Journal may exercise these rights directly or by means of third parties. The Journal may authorize third-party publishers, aggregators, and printers to publish the Article or to include the Article in databases or other services. [Examples of such third parties include Westlaw, Lexis, and EBSCO.]
e. The Journal may without further permission from the Author transfer, assign, or sublicense the rights that the Journal has pursuant to the Agreement.
f. In order to foster wider access to the Article, especially for the benefit of the nonprofit community, the Author hereby grants to the Journal the authority to publish the Article with a Creative Commons "Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives" license. [The Author should consult the Creative Commons website (www.creativecommons.org) for further information]
g. This liscense of rights to the Journal shall take effect immediately. In the event that the Journal does not publish the Article, this license to the Journal shall temrinate upon written notification by the Journal to the Author, or upon termination of all publication by the Journal. To the extent that moral rights may apply to the Article, this agreement does not affect the moral rights of the Author in or to the Article.
Rights of the Author. Without suggesting any limit on other rights that the Author may h ave with respect to the Article, the Author retains the following rights. To the extent that the Journal holds similar rights with respect to the Article consistent with this Agreement, the Author shall hold these rights on a nonexclusive basis. To the extent that the Article includes edits and other contributions by the staff of the Journal, the rights of the Author in this Paragraph include the right to use such edits and contributions.
a. The Author may publish the Article in another scholarly journal, in a book, or by other means. The Author may exercise this right of publication only after the date of first publication of the ARticle in the Journal in any format.
b. The Author shall, without limitation, have the right to use the ARticle in any form or format in connection with the Author's teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and for all of Author's academic and professional acitvities.
c. The Author shall at any time have the fright to make, or to authorize others to make, a preprint or a final published version of the ARticle available in digital form over the Internet, including, but not limited to, a website under the control fo the Author or the Author's employer or through digital repositories including, but not limited to, those maintained by scholarly societies, funding agencies, or the Author's employer. This right shall include, without limitation, the right of the Author to permit public access to the Article as part of a repository or through a service or domain maintained by teh Author's employing the institution or a service as required by law or by agreement with a funding agency. The Journal may in its discretion deposit the ARticle with any digital repository consisten with deposits permitted by the Author under ths paragraph. [Examples of such repositories include SSRN, arXiv.org, PubMed Central, and Academic Commons at Columbia University.]
d. Any of the foregoing permitted uses of the Article, or of a work based substantially on the Article, shall include an appropriate citation to the Article, stating that it has been or is to be published in the Journal, with name and date of the Journal publication and the Internet address for the website of the Journal.
Editing of the Article. This Agreement is subject to the understanding that the ordinary editing processes of the Journal will be diligently pursued and that the Article will not be published by the Journal unless, in tis final form, it is acceptable to the Author and the Journal.
