Eighty or bust: optimal foraging of Formica fusca.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if Formica fusca ants at UMBS could distinguish between several different concentrations of sugar solutions. This was done by presenting the ants with six different concentrations of sugar solutions (0%, 0.1%, 10%, 20%, 40%, and 80%) over a three day period and observing the amount of solution depleted from each of the concentrations. Although our results indicated that these ants significantly forage for higher sugar concentrations, these ants did not forage optimally. We also determined the minimum sugar concentrations that the ants could distinguish from 0% by performing several trials in which only two concentrations were compared at a time: 0% - 15%, 0% - 12.5%, 0% - 11.25%, and 0%-10%. We found their lower limit of detection to be between 11.25% and 12.5%.