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Throughout the animal kingdom, animals have been constantly competing for limited resources across limited amounts of space.
The interaction between animals of the same and different species is the focus of numerous scientific disciplines, but the focus of most has been mammals and other complex species rather competition within species like insects.
Rather than focus on the effect of spatial constraints an organism with complex brain and social hierarchy the study aimed to focus on a smaller and less complex organisms to determine if the same spatial patterns that appear with mammal groups still appear as an emergent result of environmental pressures, which is demonstrably true if antlions also display similar behavior.
On the basis of this, it was examined as to how antlion pattern themselves in groups, namely by measurement of how pit depth, width, and nearest neighbor and behavior, such as cannibalism and temporary reclusion, vary with respect to spatial constraints and temporal change.
Through prior investigation and research it was determined that antlions generally tend to avoid highly aggressive competition and likely form semi-hexagonal patterns to evenly distribute resources across the population (given that each individual could only consume so many ants).
However, it was determined that antlions sometimes exhibit extreme behaviors such as cannibalism and reclusivity when under significant environmental pressure.
The preliminary research provided background for the following hypothesis: ``As the space available to antlion groups decreases, each claims less territory, and the populations tend towards more extreme behaviors, such as cannibalism and reclusivity, to limit competition for ants as an emergent feature of individual interactions.''
Throughout the experiment several dependent variables were tested, with the independent variable acting as the size of the container, which changed from trial to trial, but did not change due to any other variable.
In continuation of this, the dependent variables throughout the experiment were the settlement patterns and behaviors of the antlions, which were quantified through the nearest neighbor calculation, pit depth and width, and the number of cannibalized antlions.
The control trial of the experiment was the 32x32 trial, as it shows the spatial patterns and behaviors of the antlions with the most available space, limiting the effect of competition on settlement patterns, which qualifies it to be a good control group
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