Olfactory memory established during trophallaxis affects food search behaviour in ants

Abstract

Recently, it has been demonstrated that nectivorous ants can establish an associative memory between sucrose (unconditioned stimulus, US) and odour (conditioned stimulus, CS) at the source during successive foraging cycles, by means of an individual learning paradigm (Dupuy et al., 2006) which leads to long-lasting memory (Josens et al., 2009). In a similar way, during foraging, ants are able to establish memories with other different sensory modalities, such as spatiotemporal (Schatz et al., 1994), visual cues for routing or navigation (Collet et al., 1992;Durier et al., 2003;Cammaerts and Lambert, 2008 SUMMARY Camponotus mus ants can associate sucrose and odour at the source during successive foraging cycles and use this memory to locate the nectar in the absence of other cues. These ants perform conspicuous trophallactic behaviour during recruitment while foraging for nectar. In this work, we studied whether Camponotus mus ants are able to establish this odour-sucrose association in the social context of trophallaxis and we evaluated this memory in another context previously experienced by the ant, as a nectar source. After a single trophallaxis of a scented solution, the receiver ant was tested in a Y-maze without any reward, where two scents were presented: in one arm, the solution scent and in the other, a new scent. Ants consistently chose the arm with the solution scent and stayed longer therein. Trophallaxis duration had no effect on the arm choice or with the time spent in each arm. Workers are able to associate an odour (conditioned stimulus) with the sucrose (unconditioned stimulus) they receive through a social interaction and use this memory as choice criteria during food searching.

Allocation of Colony‐Level Foraging Effort in Vespula germanica in Response to Food Resource Quantity, Quality, and Associated Olfactory Cues

“…). Similar responses to olfactory cues also occur in ants (Provecho & Josens ), honey bees (Balbuena et al. ), bumble bees (Dornhaus & Chittka ), and stingless bees (McCabe & Farina ).…”

Nest-based information transfer and foraging activation in the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris)

“…Trophallaxis represents one possible mechanism for achieving this transfer of information, as discussed for other wasp species such as V. germanica (Overmyer and Jeanne 1998;Taylor et al 2010Taylor et al , 2011Taylor et al , 2012a and P. occidentalis (Schueller et al 2010). The role of trophallactic exchanges in foraging information transfer and associative learning was demonstrated in bees and ants (Farina et al 2005;Farina 1996;Provecho and Josens 2009). Interestingly, the sucrose with the training scent was preferentially chosen by naïve foragers from the experimental colony both when the social information flow was concurrent (experiment 1) or up to several days prior (experiment 2).…”

Information synergy: adding unambiguous quality information rescues social information use in ants

“…Trophallaxis is used in the nest to unload food, and also provides ants with information about the food available in the environment [45–48]. This information is attended to very strongly [46,49]. L. niger ants very often contact fed workers on their way to a food source, and can often be observed performing trophallaxis away from the nest.…”