Foraging and Forager-Recruitment in Ophthalmopone Hottentota Emery (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Ants belonging to the Ponerinae are among the most specialized foragers of the family Formicidae (Wheeler, 1936; Carroll and JanZen, 1973). In Africa, the ponerine ants are predators on other invertebrates, often termites, but also beetles, crickets, other ants and isopods (Prins, 1978; 1985). Two groups in the Ponerine may be recognized: those species which prey on animals of their own body weight or smaller; and, those species which prey on animals larger, often considerably larger, than themselves. This has led to the evolution of different hunting strategies and foraging techniques in the ponerine ants (Wilson, 1958, 1971) with either no forager-recruitment or variations of group-hunting. Foraging techniques in the Ponerinae vary between tribes and within tribes with four main categories, (1) no chemical trails and no forager-recruitment, (2) foragerrecruitment by tandem-running, (3) rudimentary chemical forager-recruitment or short-lived trails, and (4) advanced chemical foragerrecruitment (Wilson, 1958,1959; Carroll & Janzen, 1973; Peeters and Crewe, 1987). Closely related species may use different hunting techniques and different forager-recruitment systems. "Recruitment" in this paper is used in a military sense and not demographically. It has recently been shown by Peeters and Crewe (1987) that Ophthalmopone berthoudi Fore1 (Ponerinae) is a solitary hunting species, contrary to assumptions in the literature that groupforaging behavior occurs throughout this genus (Wheeler, 1936; Wilson, 1958). There have been no published studies on the diet and foraging behavior of the closely related 0. hottentota, which occurs in semi-arid southwestern South Africa and Zimbabwe (Prins, 1978).