ABSTRACT
The Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, is native to South America but has become one of the most invasive species in the world. These ants heavily rely on trail pheromones for foraging, and previous studies have focused on such signals to develop a strategy for chemical control. Here, we studied the effects of pre-exposure to the trail pheromone on sugar acceptance and olfactory learning in Argentine ants. We used the synthetic trail pheromone component (Z)-9-hexadecenal, which triggers the same attraction and trail-following behavior as the natural trail pheromone. We found that pre-exposure to (Z)-9-hexadecenal increases the acceptance of sucrose solutions of different concentrations, thus changing the ants’ subjective evaluation of a food reward. However, although ants learned to associate an odor with a sucrose reward, pheromone pre-exposure affected neither the learning nor the mid-term memory of the odor-reward association. Taking into account the importance of the Argentine ant as a pest and invasive organism, our results highlight the importance of pheromonal cues in resource evaluation, a fact that could be useful in control strategies implemented for this species.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: N.R., M.G., P.d.E., R.J.; Methodology: N.R., R.J.; Validation: N.R.; Formal analysis: N.R.; Investigation: N.R., M.P.; Resources: P.d.E., R.J.; Data curation: N.R., M.P., M.A.M.; Writing - original draft: N.R., M.G., R.J.; Writing - review & editing: N.R., M.G., P.d.E., R.J.; Visualization: M.G., P.d.E., R.J.; Supervision: R.J.; Project administration: P.d.E., R.J.; Funding acquisition: P.d.E., R.J.
Funding
This work was supported by a cooperation between Argentina and France (Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innova and ECOS-SUD; Project ID A15B03) and the French Institute of Argentina (Project ID PLUS15B03; ECOS PLUS grant). R.J. was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (PICT 2016-1676 and PICT S.u. 2017-9). M.G. and P.d.E. were supported by the Institut Universitaire de France and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Project Pheromod).
Data availability
Data are available from the Figshare Digital Repository at doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12445067.
- Received June 4, 2020.
- Accepted July 15, 2020.
- © 2020. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
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