Oberhauser, Felix B. and Middleton, Eliza J. T. and Latty, Tanya and Czaczkes, Tomer J. (2019) Meat ants cut more trail shortcuts when facing long detours. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY, 222 (21): UNSP jeb20. ISSN 0022-0949, 1477-9145
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Engineered paths increase efficiency and safety but also incur construction and maintenance costs, leading to a trade-off between investment and gain. Such a trade-off is faced by Australian meat ants, which create and maintain vegetation-free trails between nests and food sources, and thus their trails are expected to be constructed selectively. To test this, we placed an artificial obstacle consisting of 300 paper grass blades between a sucrose feeder and the colony, flanked by walls either 10 cm or 80 cm long. To exploit the feeder, ants could detour around the walls or take a direct route by traversing through the obstacle. We found that, when confronted with a long alternative detour, 76% of colonies removed more grass blades and ants were also 60% more likely to traverse the obstacle instead of detouring, with clearing activity favouring higher ant flow or vice versa. An analysis of cut patterns revealed that ants did not cut randomly, but instead concentrated on creating a trail to the food source. Meat ants were thus able to collectively deploy their trail-clearing efforts in a directed manner when detour costs were high, and rapidly established cleared trails to the food source by focusing on completing a central, vertically aligned trail which was then followed by the ants.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | LEAF-CUTTING ANTS; FORAGING BEHAVIOR; TRUNK TRAILS; TRADE-OFF; ATTA; HYMENOPTERA; MAINTENANCE; FLEXIBILITY; STRATEGIES; EFFICIENCY; Iridomyrmex purpureus; Route selection; Trail clearing; Trade-off; Optimisation; Ant foraging |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 570 Life sciences 500 Science > 590 Zoological sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie > Zoologie/Evolutionsbiologie (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heinze) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Mar 2020 13:57 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Mar 2020 13:57 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/25914 |
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