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Antlions, like many predators, collect prey by passively trapping them
in pits of their own design.
But only so many pits can fit in so much space, so antlions have
evolved the means to distribute their prey-catching.
Antlions, being members of the same species, likely cooperate to create
the best results for continued reproduction.
However, the methods by which they might communicate are unclear.
The individuals certainly are not intelligent enough to deliberately
construct a social framework by careful analysis, and pheromones require
much more machinery than can be expected of an invertebrate's larvae.
In a previous study, it was observed that spatial constraints do affect
the organization of the group, especially in terms of the depth and
width of the pits which form.
Those antlions which do form pits form smaller pits, possibly to allow
for the introduction of a greater quantity of ants (antlions' primary
prey)
There are three hypothetical means by which they could discover their
environment: the trails other antlions leave, the obstacles which they
see in their environment, and the presence of gradients created by other
antlions.
To study which of these was the primary method by which their behavior
is determined, each of these pathways was interrupted, either with
artificial obstacles, artifical pits, or artificial removal of the trail
lines created by their migrations.
Similar to the previous study, pit depth, width, the distance to the
nearest neighbor, and coordinate organization were recorded.
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).
These facts created the conditions for the development of this
hypothesis: ``Antlions likely lack an intelligent mode of communication,
so interruptions in the environment (removal of trails, introduction of
physical obstacles, fictional pits) will not impact their ability to
form nesting patterns, except insofar as they cannot nest immediately
adjacent to the obstacles because the primary regulating method is
cannibalism.''
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
dead antlions.
The previous study will be examined as a control trial (as it had no
artificial interruptions), and two box sizes were used in this
experiment to see how a bottom-up behavioral explanation compares to
top-down social organization.
The restriction of available space may show up in the artificial
obstacle trial as a large explanatory variable for the antlions'
organizational choices.
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