Central-place foragers, such as social insects or nesting birds, repeatedly use the same routes from and to their nests when foraging for food. Such species forage more efficiently after accumulating experience. We examined, here, a relatively neglec...
Ants play a dual role in their interaction with plant seeds. In deserts, the consumption of seeds by granivorous ants is common, whereas mutualistic seed dispersal, often associated with scavenging ants, is rarely documented. We evaluated the contrib...
Temperature and photoperiod are the two most important factors that affect all aspects of animal life. We conducted two experiments to examine the effect of temperature and photoperiod on egg laying and development in the desert ant Cataglyphis niger...
The Central Australian red honey-pot ant Melophorus bagoti maintains non-cryptic ground-nesting colonies in the semi-desert habitat, performing all the activities outside the nest during the hottest periods of summer days. These ants rely on path int...
Background:Ants are among the most widely distributed eusocial insects, and desert ants, in particular, serve as important model organisms for studying animal navigation. Methods: In this study, we provide high-quality de novo transcriptomes for eigh...
The Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) is a highly invasive species with a widespread global distribution. However, the dynamics of its recent expansion into southwestern Argentina remain unclear. We evaluated its spread, niche shifts, and genetic di...
Ants deposit trail pheromones that guide nestmates to food sources. We tested the hypotheses that ant community members (Western carpenter ants, Camponotus modoc; black garden ants, Lasius niger; European fire ants, Myrmica rubra) (1) sense, and foll...
Animal senses cover a broad range of signal types and signal bandwidths and have inspired various sensors and bioinstrumentation devices for biological and medical applications. Insects, such as desert ants and honeybees, for example, utilize polariz...
Navigation is crucial for animal survival, and despite their small brains, insects are impressive at it. For example, desert ants acquire environmental information by learning to walk before foraging, enabling them to return home accurately over long...
The increasing occurrence of hot summer days causes stress to both humans and animals, particularly in urban areas where temperatures can remain high, even at night. Living nature offers potential solutions that require minimal energy and material co...
Navigation and positioning technology is closely related to our routine life activities, from travel to aerospace. Recently it has been found that Cataglyphis (a kind of desert ant) is able to detect the polarization direction of skylight and navigat...
Soil organic matter (SOM) is a key factor for evaluating soil fertility. Rapidly monitoring organic matter content in desert soil can provide a scientific basis for the rational development and utilization of reserve arable land resources. Although s...
Understanding of ecosystem structure and functioning requires detailed knowledge about plant–animal interactions, especially when keystone species are involved. The recent consideration of parrots as legitimate seed dispersers has widened the range o...
Iran has different climatic and geographical zones (mountainous and desert areas), mostly arid and semi-arid, which are suffering from land degradation. Desertification as a land degradation process in Iran is created by natural and anthropogenic dri...