Studies On Thermal Adaptation Of Ant, Polyrhachis Vicina Roger

Polyrhachis vicina Roger belongs to the family Formicidae, order Hymenoptera, class Insecta, mainly distributed in the southern part of China. Temperature exerts significant influence on growth, development, reproduction, behavior and geographical distribution of this species. Thermal adaptation of Polyrhachis vicina was studied in this paper to enrich the data of thermal biology of this species and to provide theoretical reference for culturing this species.The thermal adaptation of the ant acclimated to different temperatures was studied to understand the effects of constant temperature acclimation on the preferred temperature, critical temperature and locomotor performance; the thermal adaptation of the ant acclimated respectively to constant temperature and to variable temperature was studied to understand the effects of the two thermal acclimation method on preferred temperature, critical temperature and locomotor performance, and to test the optimality models; the effects of acclimation temperature and performance temperature on locomotor performance of the ant were studied to test the beneficial aclimation hypothesis. The results of the studies are listed as follows.1. Preferred temperature, critical temperature minimum and critical temperature maximum were very significantly influenced by constant temperature acclimation, and all indices were positively correlated with acclimation temperature. The final preferendum was about 30.54°C, critical temperature minimum was not higher than 45 °C and critical temperature maximum not lower than 3 °C. The acclimation response ratio of critical temperature maximum was bigger than the one of critical temperature minimum, and the thermal tolerance polygon of Polyrrhachis vicina was 1800 °C², which was likely to relate with its subtropical habitat.2. The locomotor performance of Polyrhachis vicina was very significantly influenced by constant acclimation temperature. With the increase of acclimation temperature from 15 °C to 30°C, pause frequency reduced 6.91 times min^-1, sprint speed improved 1.42 cm s^-1, and maximum distance covered by continuous locomotion enhanced 60.91 cm. These results showed that when tested at the same performance temperature, locomotor capability of the animals acclimated to the higher temperature...