Specializations and Host Associations of Social Parasites of Ants

摘要

Ant societies dominate most terrestrial ecosystems at the scales at which they function (Wilson, 1990), and numerous similar-sized organisms have evolved adaptations to coexist with them (Wasmann, 1894; Wheeler, 1910; Donisthorpe, 1927; Holldobler andWilson, 1990; Huxley and Cutler, 1991). The occurrence of myrmecophily has probably been much underestimated in the field, but drawing on Donisthorpe (1927) and other studies, Elmes (1996) calculated that as many as 100,000 species of myrmecophile existamong the insects. Since this figure is more than double the number of vertebrate species known on Earth, myrmecophily can be regarded as a common phenomenon in ecology as well as one that has evolved independently, and convergently, across many ordersof insect (Holldobler and Wilson, 1990).