An exploratory study on the use of bamboo pieces for trapping entire colonies of arboreal ants (Hymenoptera:Formicidae)

Commonly, bamboo is used as traps for solitary bees in management programs, but dried and hollow bamboo creates a semi-natural habitat also useful for ants looking for dead, soft, or rotten wood for installation of their colonies. This study examines preliminary data concerning arboreal ant species dynamics in occupying bamboo hung in contact with tree trunks and offered for colony installation in cocoa tree plantations at Ilheus, Bahia, Brazil. The experiment has only been carried out for seven weeks, yet it showed that ant colonization is extremely dynamic with these kinds of traps, mainly for species of the genera Camponotus and Pachycondyla. The use of this model of traps has diverse applications for studying ant biology aspects, such as ecological, taxonomical, cytogenetic, behavioral, or other kind of studies on these social insects.