Improving ant-surveillance trap design to reduce competitive exclusion

Abstract

The National Invasive Ant Surveillance is conducted annually around ports and other high-risk areas to detect new ant incursions into New Zealand. Currently, non-sticky food-baited vials are used to trap ants. The ability of a sticky bait trap to trap multiple ant species at baits was tested, under the hypothesis that a sticky trap would reduce the role of competitive exclusion at food sources, a drawback of food baiting. Furthermore, the role of food type, sugar, protein and a combination of both foods, on ant catch was examined. Although only 4% of traps caught multiple species, this incidence was five times greater in the sticky-bait than food-only vials. The combined food source traps caught ants more often than the single food source traps. The refinement of ant monitoring traps will aid surveillance managers in the future.