Field trip to Malaysia

From EESwiki

Thanks to the financial support of the EES my field trip to the Malayan rainforest was very successful. I´m a PhD student in the behavioral ecology group of Prof. Dr. Foitzik but the financing via a DFG project has not started yet. Fortunately the EES helps me to bridge the time until the DFG project is running.

During my PhD thesis I investigate the integration mechanism of different ant guests (myrmecophiles). The Southeast Asian army ant Leptogenys distinguenda harbors a diverse collection of myrmecophiles such as a snail, a spider, a silverfish, a phorid fly, two beetle, a collembola and at least three mite species. Ants normally do not tolerate nest intruders instead they were attacked and if not captured as food resource, expelled from the nest interior. Hence it is very astonishing that so many symbionts achieved to live at least in some live stages in army ant societies. My aim is to enlighten the reciprocal evolutionary adaptations of host ants and symbionts.

During the field trip to Malaysia we observed the behavior of different myrmecophiles (ant guests) in artificial laboratory colonies. Thus we found a lot of new insights how they integrate in the ant societies. Silverfishes and spiders rub themselves on host ant bodies to acquire chemical components of their host. The host ant recognizes intruders mainly by chemical components of the cuticula. By extracting the surface chemicals of ants and their guest, we observe if and in which way the myrmecophiles mimic the chemical profile. We extracted silverfishes and spider after five days isolation to prove if the myrmecophiles produce the surface chemicals actively or if they obtain the recognition cues passively by rubbing on host ant bodies. With the help of isolation experiments we found out what kind of food some myrmecophiles prefer. These results are very important to evaluate the impact of symbionts on their host ants. Among a lot of other things we discovered two unknown myrmecophile beetle species, which will be determined in the near future.

Besides the research work the sociability of the Malayan people impressed me, although their slowness in nearly every situation is quite unusual and sometimes arduous for us. But their slowness is much better livable than our hectic German culture. Back in Germany I was really stressed when I first stand in front of the ALDI seller.