Le Transport Des Proies Chez Les Fourmis. Y-a-T-Il Entr'Aide?

Chauvin, Rémy

doi:10.1163/156853950x00107

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…If team size is enlarged but load size remains the same, then the per capita weight declines and transport does not necessarily slow down. Indeed, we noted an increase in speed as with lower per capita weight ( Fig 4 ), consistent with studies on other ants that show faster transport as team size increases for a given load [ 40 , 51 , 52 ].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Scaling of speed with group size in cooperative transport by the ant Novomessor cockerelli

2018

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Working together allows social animals to accomplish tasks beyond the abilities of solitary individuals, but the benefits of cooperation must be balanced with the costs of coordination. Many ant species form cooperative groups to transport items too large for a single ant. However, transport by groups is often slower and less efficient than that of lone ants, for reasons that remain poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that groups are slower when porters must encircle the load to carry it, because this arrangement places ants in a variety of postures relative to the load and the direction of travel. Porters may therefore have difficulty maximizing individual forces and aligning them with those of other group members. Experiments on the desert ant Novomessor cockerelli, an adept cooperative transporter, did not support this hypothesis. Groups ranging in size from one to four ants were induced to carry loads such that all porters were aligned with one another. Load weight was adjusted so that all porters pulled the same per capita weight, but lone porters were nonetheless faster than groups of any size. As group size increased, porters persisted in carrying the load for longer periods before letting go. We used simulations to explore a scenario in which ants vary in their intrinsic speed and the group's speed is limited by that of its slowest member. This proposed mechanism is analogous to other social groups where group efficiency is determined by the weakest link. We discuss how interactions among porters, mediated by the load itself, might explain such a constraint.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Scaling of speed with group size in cooperative transport by the ant Novomessor cockerelli

2018

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“…This flexibility and ability to adapt the own motor behavior, continuously re-optimizing and refreshing action performance, might represent a tremendous evolutionary advantage and a trait that has been preserved and refined over millions of years, if one only considers that the hallmark of primates evolution is the increase of social interaction and its complexity. Primates, relative to other species able of joint action, such as ants (for a pioneering study and a recent review see, Chauvin, 1950;McCreery & Breed, 2014), have probably added to a basic skeleton or repertoire for motor interaction the richness and flexibility of new cognitive strategies made possible by brain evolution. Coherent with this view is the observation that at the core of CJA Visco-Comandini, FerrariToniolo, Papazachariadis, Caminiti, & Battaglia-Mayer, 2013) lays a distributed system whose central nodes are sectors of parietal and frontal cortex, that is the brain regions that have expanded more during evolution.…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do non-human primates cooperate? Evidences of motor coordination during a joint action task in macaque monkeys

Visco-Comandini

Ferrari-Toniolo

Satta

et al. 2015

Cortex

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“…It is proportional at small group size and then 219 becomes saturated at large group size in the neotropical ants Pheidole oxyops [21] and 220 Aphaenogaster cockerelli [2]. It seems to be almost constant irrespective of group size 221 in Eciton burchelli [9] and Formica rufa [24]. Some researches implied that larger 222 group size causes slower speed in Pheidole pallidula [25] and Novomessor cockerelli [19] 223 (note that the weights of the loads were not regulated in these experiments).…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

“…In the last case, the role and appearance of each ant are clearly 23 distinct; thus, it is out of scope in this study. Uncoordinated transportation has been 24 categorized by McCreery and Breed [10] as transportation without 'information 25 transfer,' and the latter two as transportation with 'information transfer. 26 Recently, encircling coordinated transportation or transportation with information 27 transfer has been investigated intensively in cases where worker ants appear indistinct 28 but have roles that seem to be different during transportation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral diversity assisting obstacle navigation during group transportation in ant

Utsunomiya

Takamatsu

2017

Preprint

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Cooperative transportation behavior in ants has attracted attention from a wide range of researchers, from behavioral biologists to roboticists. Ants can accomplish complex tasks as a group whereas individual ants are not intelligent (in the context of this study's tasks). In this study, group transportation and obstacle navigation in Formica japonica, an ant species exhibiting 'uncoordinated transportation' (primitive group transportation), are observed using two differently conditioned colonies. Analyses focus on the effect of group size on two key quantities: transportation speed and obstacle navigation period. Additionally, this study examines how these relationships differ between colonies. The tendencies in transportation speed differ between colonies whereas the obstacle navigation period is consistently reduced irrespective of the colony. To explain this seemingly inconsistent result in transportation speed, we focus on behavioral diversity in 'directivity', defined as the tendency of individual ants to transport a food item toward their own preferential direction. Directivity is not always toward the nest, but rather is distributed around it. The diversity of the first colony is less than that of the second colony. Based on the above results, a mechanical model is constructed. Using the translational and rotational motion equations of a rigid rod, the model mimics a food item being pulled by single or multiple ants. The directions of pulling forces exerted by individual ants are assumed to be distributed around the direction pointing toward the nest. The simulation results suggest that, as diversity in directivity increases, so does the success rate in more complicated obstacle navigation. In contrast, depending on group size, the speed of group transportation increases in the case of lower diversity while it is almost constant in the case of higher diversity. Transportation speed and obstacle navigation success rate are in a trade-off relationship.

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Le Transport Des Proies Chez Les Fourmis. Y-a-T-Il Entr'Aide?

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Scaling of speed with group size in cooperative transport by the ant Novomessor cockerelli

Scaling of speed with group size in cooperative transport by the ant Novomessor cockerelli

Do non-human primates cooperate? Evidences of motor coordination during a joint action task in macaque monkeys

Behavioral diversity assisting obstacle navigation during group transportation in ant

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