• Korean journal of applied entomology
• /
• v.60 no.2
• /
• pp.193-199
• /
• 2021

Solenopsis japonica, which is belonging to Formicidae in Hymenoptera, is a native ant species in Korea. However, it had not been studied for cold hardiness of S. japonica to understand on its overwintering mechanisms in field so far. Cold tolerance on developmental stages was measured at different cold temperature with various exposure times. Workers showed more survival at 5℃ and 10℃ compared with other stages and elevated cold tolerance when workers were exposed at 15℃ for more than 12h incubation as a rapid cold hardening (RCH) condition. RCH treatment not only increased survival of workers at cold temperatures, but also decreased supercooling point (SCP) and freezing point (FP). RCH group increased the survival rate by 44% at 10℃ compared with Non-RCH group. SCP and FP were depressed from -10.0 to -14.2℃ and from -11.3 to -15.3℃, respectively, after RCH treatment. Cold temperature increased expression level of cold- and stress-related genes such as glycerol kinase and heat shock protein. These results indicate unacclimated cold tolerance of S. japonica and its acclimation to low temperature by RCH.

• Korean journal of applied entomology
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.80-85
• /
• 1991

For the study of ant fauna in Mt. Kyeryongsan, we selected three areas and collected 317 colonies nine times from 1986 to 1990. The communities of ants were composed of 3 subfamilies, 23 genera and 45 species. Among them, Solenopsis sp. was an unrecorded species in Korea. The number of ant species distributed in each area was almost the same, and the species distributed uniformly in the nine subareas were Paratrechina flavipes and Aphaenogaster japonica. The number of species collected in the only one subarea were ten, and six among them were collected in the area of Sinwonsa temple, the westward slope. It is remarkable that Camponotus tokioensis, which is known to be distributed only in the island and coast so far, is found to be distributed in the area of Sinwonsa temple as well.