Various monitoring methods are used to estimate Argentine ant population sizes, changes and distributions, however, a comparison of these different monitoring methods is lacking. Therefore, we performed a field study to compare various monitoring methods used to estimate ant population sizes and ant activity. Four monitoring methods were compared: a) consumption of sucrose water by ants; b) counts of the numbers of ants present at jelly baits; c) counts of the number of ants crossing an imaginary line and; d) number of ants trapped in pitfall traps. We found that the variance across time points between the four monitoring methods was very similar. However, the amount of time, effort and labor each method required varied. We found that counting the number of trailing ants crossing an imaginary line for one minute to be the least laborious of the four methods.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Formicidae Linepithema humile (Argentine ant)
Keywords: monitoring
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