Koch, Alexandra and Kabas, Melanie and Czaczkes, Tomer J. (2024) No evidence that recruitment pheromone modulates olfactory, visual, or spatial learning in the ant Lasius niger. BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY, 78 (2): 16. ISSN 0340-5443, 1432-0762
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Pheromones are perhaps the most common form of intraspecific communication in the animal kingdom and used in various contexts. Their modulatory potential on cognitive processes has been demonstrated in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Particularly interesting in this regard are social insects, due to their extensive use of pheromones to organise collective behaviour. Recruitment pheromones might be expected to encourage learning, but could also hinder learning due to a blocking effect, whereby the pheromone already partially predicts the reward, hindering further cues being associated with the reward. Here, we use free-running learning assays using realistic pheromone strength to test for a modulation effect on learning in the black garden ant Lasius niger. We found no evidence that learning in three modalities (olfactory, visual, and spatial) is affected by the presence of a realistic pheromone trail. Interestingly, this is in contrast to findings in honeybees. The fact that associative learning does not seem to be influenced by recruitment pheromone in L. niger and reportedly the Argentine ant, while it is in honeybees, the possibly best-studied social insect species, is noteworthy. We speculate that a species-specific importance of social information use could drive modulatory effects of pheromones on a wide range of cognitive processes.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | SOCIAL INFORMATION; TRAIL PHEROMONES; SEX-PHEROMONES; BLOCKING; FOOD; PSEUDOBLOCKING; COMMUNICATION; HYMENOPTERA; Trail pheromone; Lasius niger; Appetitive learning; Social insects |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 570 Life sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie > Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology (Prof. Dr. Peter J. Flor) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Jul 2025 07:13 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Jul 2025 07:13 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/63406 |
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