How is activity distributed among and within tasks in Temnothorax ants?

Pinter‐Wollman, Noa; Hubler, Julia; Holley, Jo Anne; Franks, Nigel R.; Dornhaus, Anna

doi:10.1007/s00265-012-1396-2

Cited by 117 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…To allow for reliable long-term tracking of individuals in highly dense social environments, researchers have augmented image analysisbased strategies with unique identification tags. This includes tags such as colours [40] or QR codes (two-dimensional barcodes), which have now been deployed on ants [10,28,41], honeybees [42] and bumblebees [43]. Most of this work is confined to laboratory conditions.…”

Section: (I) Extracting Movement Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour

Pinter‐Wollman

Penn

Théraulaz

et al. 2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 11 to a theme issue 'Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour'. Built structures, such as animal nests or buildings that humans occupy, serve two overarching purposes: shelter and a space where individuals interact. The former has dominated much of the discussion in the literature. But, as the study of collective behaviour expands, it is time to elucidate the role of the built environment in shaping collective outcomes. Collective behaviour in social animals emerges from interactions, and collective cognition in humans emerges from communication and coordination. These collective actions have vast economic implications in human societies and critical fitness consequences in animal systems. Despite the obvious influence of space on interactions, because spatial proximity is necessary for an interaction to occur, spatial constraints are rarely considered in studies of collective behaviour or collective cognition. An interdisciplinary exchange between behavioural ecologists, evolutionary biologists, cognitive scientists, social scientists, architects and engineers can facilitate a productive exchange of ideas, methods and theory that could lead us to uncover unifying principles and novel research approaches and questions in studies of animal and human collective behaviour. This article, along with those in this theme issue aims to formalize and catalyse this interdisciplinary exchange.This article is part of the theme issue 'Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour'.

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Section: (I) Extracting Movement Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour

Pinter‐Wollman

Penn

Théraulaz

et al. 2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

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“…All had at least one queen, with worker populations ranging from 20 to 250 and brood populations ranging from 20 to 280. We estimate that 25-100 ants (one-third of each colony's worker population) actively participated in scouting, site assessment, and recruitment (53). Each colony was housed in a nest like those described above, but without any light filters.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ant colonies outperform individuals when a sensory discrimination task is difficult but not when it is easy

Sasaki

Granovskiy

Mann

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“Collective intelligence” and “wisdom of crowds” refer to situations in which groups achieve more accurate perception and better decisions than solitary agents. Whether groups outperform individuals should depend on the kind of task and its difficulty, but the nature of this relationship remains unknown. Here we show that colonies of Temnothorax ants outperform individuals for a difficult perception task but that individuals do better than groups when the task is easy. Subjects were required to choose the better of two nest sites as the quality difference was varied. For small differences, colonies were more likely than isolated ants to choose the better site, but this relationship was reversed for large differences. We explain these results using a mathematical model, which shows that positive feedback between group members effectively integrates information and sharpens the discrimination of fine differences. When the task is easier the same positive feedback can lock the colony into a suboptimal choice. These results suggest the conditions under which crowds do or do not become wise.

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“…Contrary to our expectations, proactive colonies did not rescue larvae more rapidly than reactive colonies, likely because brood rescue is performed by a very small subset of specialized workers. For example, in Temnothorax species, task distributions are skewed: a few ants carry out most of a given task and many ants carry out a small part of it (Pinter-Wollman, Hubler, et al 2012).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

A proactive–reactive syndrome affects group success in an ant species

Blight

Díaz-Mariblanca

Cerdá

et al. 2015

BEHECO

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Social insects have been particularly evolutionarily successful: they dominate terrestrial ecosystems all over the globe. Their success stems from their social organization, where one or a few individuals reproduce, whereas others carry out different colony tasks. From an evolutionary standpoint, social species are particularly interesting because natural selection acts at both the individual and colony levels. Therefore, we might expect to see selection acting simultaneously on personality at the individual level and colony level. In this study, we tested whether captive colonies of the ant Aphaenogaster senilis exhibited different behavioral types and evaluated their consequences for intraspecific competition. Our results demonstrate that colonies of the same age exposed to standardized laboratory conditions did indeed have different personalities. In addition, we found that A. senilis demonstrated a behavioral syndrome that included proactive and reactive behaviors: colonies varied in their approaches to exploration, risk taking, food retrieval, and conspecific interactions. This syndrome appears to be associated with a trade-off between competition for food resources and temperaturerelated foraging risks. "Bold" colonies contained individuals who more readily explored novel environments, exhibited aggressive behaviors, and demonstrated higher food-retrieval efficiency during intraspecific competition trials. However, such colonies were also more risk prone: workers suffered higher mortality rates because they more frequently foraged over their critical thermal maximum. The trade-off we observed under laboratory conditions might be key in maintaining colony-level personality, thus driving local-level adaptations in collective behavior.

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How is activity distributed among and within tasks in Temnothorax ants?

Cited by 117 publications

References 71 publications

Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour

Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour

Ant colonies outperform individuals when a sensory discrimination task is difficult but not when it is easy

A proactive–reactive syndrome affects group success in an ant species

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