‘Real estate’ experiments.
In all 258 of 259 trials, there was a clear winner of the ‘real estate’ battle after 24 hours, meaning that one of the two species had occupied the artificial nest. From examining the wins and losses, a clear hierarchy emerged, with some species winning the vast majority (>70%) of trials in which they were involved, and other species winning few trials (<30%). The ranking shows that the twig-nesting species Myrmelachista mexicana is the highest ranked species, while Pseudomyrmex ejectus is the lowest ranked species in the hierarchy (Table 1). The one trial that did not result in a winner was a trial involving P. elongatus and P. ejectus .