Pollution diminishes intra-specific aggressiveness between wood ant colonies

摘要: A variety of common environmental pollutants are known to affect the animal behaviour, but occurrence and extent pollution-induced behavioural changes in wild populations practically unknown. Here we show that heavy metal pollution reduces normal intra-specific aggressive behaviour wood ant, Formica aquilonia, a dominant territorial ant species boreal forests. Ants exposed long-term around copper smelter showed higher concentrations were less towards member foreign unpolluted colony than ants from an uncontaminated area. pollution-related decline level aggressiveness this keystone general predator may potentially structure invertebrate community temperate Further studies needed find out whether change is directly caused by toxicity or indirectly via secondary effects, such as changed resource levels.