Risk Management Practices and SMEs: An empirical study on Turkish SMEs

Abstract

Workers of the temporary parasitic ant Lasius sp. were perfectly compatiblewith their hosts Lasius fuliginosus. Aggression was never seen betweenallospecific nestmates in either field or laboratory. In the laboratory,trophallaxis and allogrooming between allospecific nestmates werestatistically more frequent than that between conspecifics. Theseants were highly aggressive toward individuals of either speciesfrom another mixed colony located 1 km away, indicating that theydiscriminated nestmates and nonnestmates regardless of the speciesto which they belonged. No aggressive actions, however, were observedbetween two neighboring mixed nests located 5m apart. We have notconsidered, however, the relationship of the two neighboring nests:the two nests may have been two subunits of the same family or sistercolonies, or may have been different colonies but discriminated fromdistant aliens. Gas chromatography analysis on the total cuticularextracts showed that Lasius sp. and L. fuliginosus possess distinctcuticular profiles, even though they were collected from the samemixed colony.