UCLA

The velvety tree ant (Liometopum occidental Emery) is a dominant ant species found in Californian pine and oak woodlands. We performed a series of experiments to examine the degree of intraspecific aggression between nests. Within a site locality, ants collected from distances over a kilometer apart showed no aggression. However, ants from separate sites (more than 150 km apart) were strongly aggressive towards each other. Observation of food collection from baits further showed that L. occidentale trails can exceed over 70m. These combined observations suggest that L. occidentale has a natural life history that exhibits unicoloniality with perhaps the formation of large, habitat-dominating supercolonies. We also report an observation of a mating flight of L. occidentale that suggests females do disperse from their natal nests.