HERMETISMO ENTRE Solenopsis gayi SPINOLA, 1851 Y Brachymyrmex giardii EMERY, 1894 (HYMENOPTERA,FORMICIDAE)

in order to analyse the presence of hermetism between the solenopsis gayi & brachymyrmex giardii species experiments were carried out with five nest of each specie and therefore ten ants were transferred to the receptive nests (s. gayi & b. giardii). the ten intruders ants were relocated to the residents nest and this process was done by taking the ants one by one to each nest starting from one specie as a resident then turning this into a intruder. the presence or absence of the following behavioural events were under observation for two minutes: antennal exploration (ea), mandibular aperture (am), bite (mo), ventral abdominal flexure (fva); dorsal abdominal flexure (fda), fight (l), intruder transport (ti), and backward movement (r). after the observation of each event, the arithmetic mean and the standard deviation were calculated to obtain the latency time (in seconds) for every behavioural event. the frequency analysis were done using test of independence with c2.. the average time of presentation of each event among species and nests was compared using nested analysis of variance. as a result of the c2 calculation in the transferences from b. giardii to s. gayi and from s. gayi to b. giardii it was confirmed that in all these transferences there was a significant difference at the presentation's frequency of the different behavioural events, except for the dorsal abdominal flexure and backward movement, which presented 0 and 1. the analysis of variance showed that in antennal exploration, mandibular aperture and ventral abdominal flexure there were significant differences between the species as well as in nests. for the events bite and fight, there were not significant differences between species, in contrast there were significant differences between nests. in the case of intruder transport and backward movement there were not significant differences between species, neither did it between nests