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Weaponry

Posted by Anekeia on 22 Apr 2011 at 19:38 GMT

an effective weapon against L. humile
http://plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0018717#article1.body1.sec4.p1

Elsewhere in the article the authors point out that these secretions are effective against many other ant species. That important bit of information is elided here.

No competing interests declared.

RE: Weaponry

LKuritzky replied to Anekeia on 25 Apr 2011 at 17:33 GMT

We focused our study on the lethality of the secretion on L. humile and that's why we don't discuss other species.

Other papers have mentioned the P. imparis secretion and its effects only in passing observations. This is the first paper that we know of to examine it's context, lethality and composition in detail.

We focused on L. humile as opposed to other species because of the large number of interactions witnessed between P. imparis and L. humile species in initial observations. We did not observe many interactions (aggressive or otherwise) between P. imparis and other native species.

Competing interests declared: Author