Route learning during tandem running in the rock ant<i>Temnothorax albipennis</i>

Sasaki, Takao; Danczak, Leo; Thompson, Beth; Morshed, Trisha; Pratt, Stephen C.

doi:10.1242/jeb.221408

Cited by 15 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…of 5 deg. These values were chosen based on our experience of the movements of T. albipennis ant workers ( Mcleman et al, 2002 ; Pratt et al, 2001 ) and that of other researchers ( Sasaki et al, 2020 ). The step length in the program was 2 mm because this approximates the length of a T. albipennis worker.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In common with mass recruitment, tandem running in Temnothorax ants may actually involve some trail laying by the leading ant ( Basari et al, 2014b ), but such trails are neither slavishly followed nor reinforced; rather, they may serve as safety lines to help ensure that individuals do not become lost ( Mcleman et al, 2002 ; Pratt et al, 2001 ). Behavioural studies have suggested which pheromone glands are used by Temnothorax ants for communication in different circumstances ( Möglich, 1979 ; Möglich et al, 1974 ; Morgan, 2008 ; Provost et al, 1993 ; Qiu, 2021 preprint; Sasaki et al, 2020 ). However, we agree with Sasaki et al (2014) that little is known of the pheromone chemistry of Temnothorax .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Robotic communication with ants

Franks

Podesta

Jarvis

et al. 2022

Journal of Experimental Biology

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We used a robotic gantry to test the hypothesis that tandem running in the ant Temnothorax albipennis can be successful in the absence of trail laying by the leader. Pheromone glands were placed on a pin attached to a gantry. This set-up substituted for the leader of a tandem run. Neither the pin nor the glands touched the substrate and thus the ant following the robot was tracking a plume of airborne pheromones. The robot led individual workers from their current nest to a potential new one. The robotic gantry was programmed to allow for human intervention along its path to permit the following ant to stop and survey its surroundings and then catch up with its mechanical leader. The gantry then automatically tracked the precise route taken by each ant from the new nest back to the old one. Ants led by the robot were significantly more successful at finding their way home than those we carried to the new nest that had no opportunity to learn landmarks. The robot was programmed to take either a straight or a sinusoidal path to the new nest. However, we found no significant difference in the abilities of ants that had been led on such direct or sinuous paths to find their way home. Here, the robot laid no trail but our findings suggest that, under such circumstances, the following ant may lay a trail to substitute for the missing one.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robotic communication with ants

Franks

Podesta

Jarvis

et al. 2022

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Studies on the rock ant Temnothorax albipennis (Franklin, 2014) and C. consobrinus (Schultheiss et al, 2015) demonstrated that the experience gained improves navigational success both for leaders and followers. In T. nylanderi, tandem run followers learn specific routes from their leaders: independent journeys back to the food source were significantly more similar to the routes on which the ants had been led, compared with the routes taken by other tandem runs (Sasaki et al, 2020). Glaser and Grüter (2018) found that in T. nylanderi the success rate (75-86%) of tandem runs increases with the leader's experience, from 67% for the first tandem run to 94% for the fourth.…”

Section: Behavioral and Cognitive Individual Variability In Tandem Running Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ants’ Personality and Its Dependence on Foraging Styles: Research Perspectives

Резникова

2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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The paper is devoted to analyzing consistent individual differences in behavior, also known as “personalities,” in the context of a vital ant task—the detection and transportation of food. I am trying to elucidate the extent to which collective cognition is individual-based and whether a single individual’s actions can suffice to direct the entire colony or colony units. The review analyzes personalities in various insects with different life cycles and provides new insights into the role of individuals in directing group actions in ants. Although it is widely accepted that, in eusocial insects, colony personality emerges from the workers’ personalities, there are only a few examples of investigations of personality at the individual level. The central question of the review is how the distribution of behavioral types and cognitive responsibilities within ant colonies depends on a species’ foraging style. In the context of how workers’ behavioral traits display during foraging, a crucial question is what makes an ant a scout that discovers a new food source and mobilizes its nestmates. In mass recruiting, tandem-running, and even in group-recruiting species displaying leadership, the division of labor between scouts and recruits appears to be ephemeral. There is only little, if any, evidence of ants’ careers and behavioral consistency as leaders. Personal traits characterize groups of individuals at the colony level but not performers of functional roles during foraging. The leader-scouting seems to be the only known system that is based on a consistent personal difference between scouting and foraging individuals.

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“…In these ants, a successful tandem run is achieved through bidirectional feedback between partners (Franks and Richardson, 2006). This feedback allows the follower to regulate the movement speed of the pair, so that the follower can learn the travel route demonstrated by the leader (Sasaki et al, 2020; Valentini et al, 2020b). In other ant lineages where tandem running has arisen (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This feedback allows the follower to regulate the movement speed of the pair, so that the follower can learn the travel route demonstrated by the leader (Sasaki et al, 2020;Valentini et al, 2020b). In other ant lineages where tandem running has arisen (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cryptic functional diversity in ant tandem runs

Mizumoto

Tanaka

Valentini

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Ants have evolved diverse recruitment methods to guide colony members to valuable resources, such as food or nest sites. One of these methods, tandem running, consists of an informed leader directly guiding a naive follower every step of the way from nest to resource. Although this behavior appears superficially similar in the different ant taxa in which it has independently evolved, this similarity could conceal underlying functional and mechanistic differences. Here we present a combined network and information-theoretic analysis, which reveals fundamental differences in the tandem recruitment between two distantly related ant genera, Temnothorax and Diacamma. Temnothorax uses tandem running to recruit additional recruiters, whereas Diacamma uses it principally to move the passive majority of the colony, a task that Temnothorax accomplishes with a different behavior, social carrying. Accordingly, the structure of the tandem run recruitment networks of Diacamma was different from those of Temnothorax, with Diacamma networks more closely resembling the social carrying networks of Temnothorax. Furthermore, an information-theoretic analysis of the spatial trajectories of leaders and followers revealed that Diacamma tandem runs lack bidirectional information flow, the signature of route-learning in Temnothorax tandem runs. These results suggest that Diacamma uses tandem runs not to share information, but to transport nestmates. By quantifying the cryptic diversity of communication behavior, this study increases the resolution of our understanding of animal societies.

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Route learning during tandem running in the rock antTemnothorax albipennis

Cited by 15 publications

References 48 publications

Robotic communication with ants

Robotic communication with ants

Ants’ Personality and Its Dependence on Foraging Styles: Research Perspectives

Cryptic functional diversity in ant tandem runs

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