Balancing Carbohydrate-biased Urban Nutritional landscapes: Can Prey Subsidies Alter Ant Behavior?

Balancing Carbohydrate-biased Urban Nutritional landscapes: Can Prey Subsidies Alter Ant Behavior? | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Balancing Carbohydrate-biased Urban Nutritional landscapes: Can Prey Subsidies Alter Ant Behavior? Emily Kanach, Amy M Savage This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4401811/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract As urbanization changes our environment, species that share our cities must adapt to changing abiotic conditions. Ant species found in the most urbanized spaces within the urban habitat mosaic must cope with altered nutritional landscapes, with highly reduced arthropod prey availability and an abundance of high carbohydrate human food-waste. Outside cities, ants who consume high-carbohydrate diets are often more voracious predators relative to conspecifics with more balanced diets. Therefore, we hypothesized ants in the most urbanized habitats are more voracious predators than those in lower stress urban habitats. To better understand this relationship, we assessed the predatory behaviors of Tetramorium immigrans colonies in city parks and street medians before and after supplementing their diets with insect prey (house crickets; Acheta domesticus). Prior to cricket supplements, T. immigrans ants discovered proxy prey at equal rates in street medians and city parks during predation trials. However, T. immigrans workers attacked and removed prey at significantly faster rates compared to those in parks. After 12 weeks of supplements, T. immigrans workers in parks displayed slower predatory behaviors compared to before supplementation, while workers in medians were faster to attack and remove prey than before cricket supplements. When predatory behaviors were observed the following summer, workers in parks returned to predatory levels similar to initial trials, and workers in medians were even faster than previous trials. This study provides a new perspective on how human food waste and urbanization can influence the predatory behaviors of an ecologically dominant ant species in cities, Tetramorium immigrans. ants food waste predation Tetramorium urban ecology Full Text Supplementary Files Statistics.xlsx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-4401811","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":307714873,"identity":"ebceccb8-7505-4186-bfb8-d898fea3a46c","order_by":0,"name":"Emily Kanach","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA5klEQVRIiWNgGAWjYFACxsYDDAdADB7GByCSjwgtDTAtzAYgko0Ye2Ba2CRAFEEt/GKHGw7znLHL428/e6zya46dDBsD88NHN/BokZydCNRyI7lY4kxe2m3ZbclAh7EZG+fg0WJwG6TlA3Niww0es9uS25iBWnjYpPFpsYdoqU+cD9RSLLmtnrAWA2mwww4nbgBqYfy47TBhLRJAWw7OOXM8ceOZHGNpxm3HediYCfiFf3b6wwdvjlUnzjt+xvDjz23V9vzszQ8f49MCAkw8UAYzmMFMQDkIMP5AZ4yCUTAKRsEoQAYABIdN1hIQd74AAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2421-1561","institution":"Rutgers-Camden: Rutgers University Camden","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Emily","middleName":"","lastName":"Kanach","suffix":""},{"id":307714874,"identity":"0e182ea7-03af-4c43-ae04-06f28a731141","order_by":1,"name":"Amy M Savage","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Rutgers-Camden: Rutgers University Camden","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Amy","middleName":"M","lastName":"Savage","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2024-05-10 16:14:25","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-4401811/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4401811/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":59828550,"identity":"76cc2939-7c46-4f57-b2a6-39ba5d427d4e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-07-08 06:47:56","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1802339,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"AntBehaviorManuscriptsubmission.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4401811/v1_covered_5f98f75f-81de-4107-ac18-730d290567ad.pdf"},{"id":58028407,"identity":"381b9fc3-6ea2-4862-a4dc-6ed86ccaa33d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-06-10 07:16:38","extension":"xlsx","order_by":4,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":37758,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Statistics.xlsx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4401811/v1/8931337129f5c46ed818909a.xlsx"}],"financialInterests":"","formattedTitle":"Balancing Carbohydrate-biased Urban Nutritional landscapes: Can Prey Subsidies Alter Ant Behavior?","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"ants, food waste, predation, Tetramorium, urban ecology","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-4401811/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4401811/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"As urbanization changes our environment, species that share our cities must adapt to changing abiotic conditions. 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