Competition between ants for coconut palm nesting sites

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Abstract
About 85 different ant species were found nesting on coconut palms in Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Trinidad. Three occurred in all countries. With the exception of the leaf-nesting Oecophylla spp, all nested in leaf axils and spadices mostly between the two sheaths (spathes) and peduncle of the spadix. Up to eight species were found nesting in the same palm and five in the same spadix. In the latter circumstances the nest distribution of different non-dominant species is initially associated with the ‘height’ of available spaces, the smaller species nesting in the narrower, more distal end and the larger in the proximal end of the spadix. However, the small dominants, Pheidole spp and Wasmannia auropunctata, initially choose the large spaces in ageing spadices and leaf axils. In the spatially simple leaf axil the most striking association was between the small dominant Wasmannia auropunctata and the large ponerine Odontomachus bauri with W. auropunctata nesting below and between galleries made by O. bauri in old and dead leaf axils. Different species with overlapping niche requirements nested very closely in the same part of a spadix. In these circumstances they seemed mutually tolerant, more so than at food sites where one was sometimes observed to displace others. Such observations suggest that apparently simple dominance and displacement concepts can be relatively complex when applied to competition for similar nesting sites, and that this needs to be taken into account in the use of beneficial ants that are important in biological control, and in the suppression of their harmful competitors.