Ecology

Ferguson HM, Dornhaus A, Beeche A, Borgemeister C, Gottlieb M, Mulla MS, Gimnig JE, Fish D, Killeen GF 2010 ‘Ecology: a prerequisite for Malaria elimination and eradication’, PLoS Medicine 7: e1000303 - pdf - forum article resulting from a Gates Foundation workgroup, arguing that mosquito ecology is poorly understood, but essential to full malaria eradication (and perhaps to significant progress in that area)

Jones EI, Dornhaus A 2011 'Predation risk makes bees reject rewarding flowers and reduce foraging activity', Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65: 1505-1511 - pdf - empirical paper on bumble bees in which bees were squeezed with forceps to simulate a (failed) predation attempt

Huang MH, Dornhaus A 2008 ‘A meta-analysis of ant social parasitism: host characteristics of different parasitism types and a test of Emery's rule’ Ecological Entomology 33: 589-596 - pdf - comparative analysis shows social parasites are closely related to their hosts (Emery’s rule) in inquilinism and temporary parasitism, but not in dulosis and xenobiosis, indicating the different social parasite types may have different evolutionary origins. Chemical mimicry may allow invasion of large host colonies IF parasites are closely related to hosts and concentrate on a single host species; other social parasites may use a variety of mimicry or invasion strategies (an erratum provides the supplementary information, which was not linked in the original publication).

Bengston SE, Dornhaus A, Rabeling C 2024 ‘The discovery of mixed colonies in Temnothorax ants supports the territoriality hypothesis of dulotic social parasite evolution in myrmicine ants’, Insectes sociaux 72: 59-69 - bioRxiv - pdf - northern US populations of Temnothorax live under high competition for nest sites, and we find here that they often contain mixed-species colonies, probably resulting from indiscriminate brood robbing from other congeneric colonies.

Bengston SE, Dornhaus A 2013 ‘Colony size does not predict foraging distance in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus: a puzzle for standard scaling models’, Insectes sociaux 60: 93-96 - pdf - following individual workers in the field, we find a median foraging distance of ~1.5m in the leaf litter for T. rugatulus ants, but no significant differences between colonies or correlation with colony size. Possibly this indicates weak selection on foraging efficiency in this species.

Dornhaus A, Houston A 2025 ‘Optimal competitors: the balance of attraction and choices of mutualists, like pollinators, drives facilitation and may promote crop pollination’, Proc Biol Sci (Proceedings B) 292: 20251387 - bioRxiv - shared mutualists or other consumers may help or hinder, i.e. cause facilitation or competition, even when limiting. The model demonstrates this principle even though competition seems the 'intuitive' outcome from verbal argument alone.