Meeting Abstract
Power-amplifying “trap-jaw” mandibles have independently evolved multiple times in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Nearly all trap-jaw ant taxa consist of small colonies of monomorphic workers that forage solitarily. An exception to this pattern is the ant Daceton armigerum . Daceton colonies can have thousands of individuals and their continuously polymorphic workers will cooperate to retrieve prey. In this study we characterize intra-specific scaling of strike kinematics and fatigue in mandible performance in this arboreal trap-jaw ant that exhibits a threefold difference in body size between the smallest and largest workers. Strike duration and maximum rotational velocity scale positively and negatively with body size, respectively. Maximum rotational kinetic energy scales positively with body size, suggesting that mandible mass and not maximum velocity drives energetic performance of strikes. The time interval between strikes, but not strike performance itself, increases with continuous stimulation of strikes, suggesting that the loading mechanism of the mandibles fatigues with continuous stimulation but the energetic output of the strike is conserved.
