Fig. 1.

A hypothetical set of ant nests (circles) and the relationships between them drawn by different methods of polydomous colony delineation. a Worker trails, denoted by lines between nests; b resource exchange, denoted by dotted lines with arrows showing the direction of resource movement; c Spatial clustering, denoted by lines around clusters; d mutual non-aggression, denoted by dotted lines around groups; e different genetic groupings, denoted by patterns within the circles. Real polydomous colonies are likely to show much lower variation between different methods; we vary the results to demonstrate different methods may not agree