Dominant Ant Species in Four Habitats in Hawaii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

The Hawaiian Islands represent one of the few ecosystems in the world that lacks native ants and thus represents a unique environment in which to study invasion biology. In the course of a study of behavioral interactions among invasive ant species, we collected the most abundant ants from four different field sites on the islands of Oahu and Hawaii. One year after the original collections, we returned to these sites and again surveyed the dominate ant fauna. We hypothesized that the species showing highest levels of aggression in laboratory assays would continue to be most abundant at their respective collection sites; and this proved to be the case at three of the four locations. Pheidole megacephala, Linepithema humile, and Wasmannia auropunctata were each most abundant in both 2005 and 2006 at their respective collection sites, while Technomyrmex albipes was more common in the second year than Anoplolepis gracilipes (the major species collected a year earlier) at the fourth location.