PhD Research Project

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What are the benefits of distributed nesting to a highly invasive pest?

Institution:

University of York

Dept/School/Faculty:

Department of Biology

PhD Supervisor:

Dr EJH Robinson

Application Deadline:

No more applications being accepted

Funding Availability:

Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)

PhD Research Project

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While most ant colonies are highly territorial, some ant species have evolved unicoloniality, where a population of ants show no aggression towards conspecifics and act as a single giant colony distributed across many nest sites. This extreme form of polydomy (one colony in many nests) is commonly seen in highly invasive ant species, such as the Pharaoh’s ant. Little is known about how the organisation of the distributed nesting system benefits this globally successful species. This project will use laboratory experiments to investigate how Pharaoh’s ants use their multiple-nest system to invade a new territory, and how the colony is organised across their nests. The project will use RFID technology to radio-tag individual ants and also video monitoring of colony-level patterns, for example to test how the ants trade-off defence of existing territory with expansion into new territory, and how unicoloniality protects the ant colony from traditional pest control methods. The results of this work will provide new insights into how distributed systems can function collectively, which will have applications both in pest control and in deepening our understanding of decentralised organisation.