Role of Army ants within their ecosystem
The role that army ants play within their respective niches is complex and multidimensional. The sheer size of army ant colonies means that they require a lot of prey items to sustain the ever changing colony. Some colonies have been reported to consume over 500,000 organisms within the space of one foraging day(Gotwald, 1995). This will have considerable impact on the abundance of prey organisms. Army ants are very sensitive to habitat fragmentation as it is often hard for them to move the queen between habitats. They are often the first to die if fragmentation occur. The ants have also developed a symbiosis with some species of birds and other organisms who share their ecosystem. Birds will follow army ant colonies and consume prey items that they can take from the ants. This means that bird populations are reliant on the ant colonies for food and are impacted on heavily by the loss of the ants(Gotwald, 1995). Swarm following butterflies also feed on the droppings of the birds themselves making them indirectly dependent on the army ants (Gotwald, 1995). Other symbionts are those that the ants tolerate and even those that are accepted into the colony itself. All are dependent on the ants making army ants a keystone species in certain environments.