Harvester Ant Foraging Speed and Success Data from Southern Mexico

Field-based thermal performance curves for individual foraging speed and collective foraging success of Pogonomyrmex barbatus ants in a tropical deciduous forest in southern Mexico. The dataset includes records of ant movement speed, counts of ant flow at nest entrances, and sampled surface temperatures around nests. It was authored by Jose Israel Valencia Esquivel and last updated on 2026-04-27.

Use Cases

• Modeling thermal performance curves for foraging speed based on individual ant movement records.
• Analyzing shifts in optimal temperature for collective foraging success between morning and afternoon conditions.
• Calculating thermoregulatory effectiveness and exploitation indices using habitat temperature data.
• Investigating the decoupling between individual speed and collective success under thermal stress.

Strengths

• Includes three distinct data subsets (foraging speed, foraging success, matrix temperatures) enabling integrated analysis.
• Data supports a direct comparison with historical data, revealing a 40% contraction in the daily foraging window since 2013.
• Specific optimal temperature values (e.g., 44°C for individual speed) are provided from the analysis.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is small (98.5 KB), indicating a limited scope of observations.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Field-based observations and sampling in a tropical deciduous forest.

Time Range

Study period includes comparison with data from 2013, but specific collection dates are not provided.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-27 17:10:40; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Tropical deciduous forest in southern Mexico.