Food information acquired socially overrides individual food assessment in ants

Josens, Roxana; Mattiacci, Analía; Lois‐Milevicich, Jimena; Giacometti, Alina

doi:10.1007/s00265-016-2216-x

Cited by 21 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…It is thus all the more striking that such information provision causes a reversal in information use choice, as the quality information is not directly linked to the alternative path. Provision of information about food associated cues, such as the odour of the shared food [45,49], is also no doubt an important role of contacts and trophallaxis, although we could not find any role for food odour in the current experiment (see supplement S1 figure S1). The ability to redirect workers to the highest quality underexploited food source will aid colonies secure resources from competition [63] and most efficiently utilize a colony’s’ limited processing and storage capacity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…Indeed, if ambiguity exists, it is lower in the social information: the forager not only has her own experience of finding the flower acceptable, but also the presence of a conspecific suggests that conspecifics also find the flower acceptable, resulting in more weight of information about quality for the socially advertised flower. Likewise, Josens et al [49] describe how trophallactic interactions with a forager providing scented, untainted food can cause foragers to accept similarly scented food tainted with poison, which they would otherwise avoid. Here again, the social information component is based on direct sensory experience of the food (trophallaxis), and the reasons the ants overweigh this information over their own later sensory information are similar to those described for the bumblebee examples above.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ants receiving trophallaxis may even respond as if they have themselves successfully foraged, depositing trail pheromone when otherwise only successful ants do so [61]. Information gained during such contacts, and especially trophallactic interactions, seems to be particularly well attended to – even more so than information gained while foraging [46,49]. This information, gained in the nest or on the trail, can then drive strategic information use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Czaczkes

Beckwith

2018

Preprint

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Animals have access to many alternative information sources when making decisions, such as private information (e.g. memory) and social information. Social insects make extensive use of social information. However, when intentional social information (e.g. pheromone trails in ants) conflicts with private information (e.g. route memories), insects often follow their private information. Why is this? We propose that an asymmetry in the type of information provided by these two information sources drives the neglect of social information: In ants, workers with certain information about the quality of a food source (memory) ignore valuable social information (pheromone trails) because the pheromone trails encode only a very ambiguous measure of food quality. This leads to a testable hypothesis: the addition of unambiguous quality information should rescue social information following. To test this, we trained ants to a poor quality (0.25M sucrose) food source, and then provided an alternative path along with either 1) no information, 2) a pheromone trail, 3) a 0.2μl 1.5M sucrose droplet, providing unambiguous quality information, or 4) both a trail and a droplet. When either no or only one information source was provided (1-3), most ants (60-75%) continued following their own memory. However, the addition of unambiguous quality information (4) rescued trail following: when both a trail and a droplet were provided, 75% of ants followed the trail. In further experiments, we show that quality information gleaned from direct contact with fed nestmates produced similar effects. Using florescence microscopy, we demonstrate that food (and information) flows from fed workers to outgoing foragers, explaining the frequent contacts on trails. We propose that the type of information an information source can convey, and its ambiguity, is a strong driver of which source of information is attended to.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Czaczkes

Beckwith

2018

Preprint

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“…Indeed, if ambiguity exists, it is lower in the social information: the forager not only has her own experience of finding the flower acceptable, but also the presence of a conspecific suggests that she too finds the flower acceptable, resulting in more information about quality for the socially advertised flower. Likewise, Josens et al [60] describe how trophallactic interactions with a nest-mate providing scented, untainted food can cause foraging ants to accept similarly scented food tainted with poison, which they would otherwise reject. Here again, the social information component is based on direct sensory experience of the food (trophallaxis), and the reasons the ants overweigh this information over their own later sensory information is, as above, owing to the concurrent presence of social information and personal sensory information.…”

Section: (B) Information Type Asymmetry Explains Information Use Pattmentioning

confidence: 99%

The multi-dimensional nature of information drives prioritization of private over social information in ants

et al. 2019

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When personally gathered and socially acquired information conflict, animals often prioritize private information. We propose that this is because private information often contains details that social information lacks. We test this idea in an ant model. Ants using a food source learn its location and quality rapidly (private information), whereas pheromone trails (social information) provide good directional information, but lack reliable information about food quality. If this lack is indeed responsible for the choice of memory over pheromone trails, adding information that better food is available should cause foragers to switch their priority to social information. We show it does: while ants follow memory rather than pheromones when they conflict, adding unambiguous information about a better potential food source (a 2 µl droplet of good food) reverses this pattern, from 60% of ants following their memory to 75% following the pheromone trail. Using fluorescence microscopy, we demonstrate that food (and thus information) flows from fed workers to outgoing foragers, explaining the frequent contacts of ants on trails. Ants trained to poor food that contact nest-mates fed with good food are more likely to follow a trail than ants which received information about poor food. We conclude that social information may often be ignored because it lacks certain crucial dimensions, suggesting that information content is crucial for understanding how and when animals prioritize social and private information.

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A mechanistic understanding of prebaiting to improve interaction with wildlife management devices

Bytheway

Johnstone

Price

et al. 2021

Pest Management Science

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BACKGROUND: Prebaiting is a technique involving early deployment of 'unarmed' devices (e.g. baits and traps) to increase efficacy of wildlife management. Although commonly used, the mechanisms by which prebaiting works are poorly understood. We propose three mechanisms by which prebaiting may increase device interaction probabilities; (1) overcoming neophobia towards novel devices, (2) a 'trickle in' effect increasing time for animals to encounter devices; and (3) social information transfer about rewards associated with devices. We conducted a survey of 100 articles to understand how prebaiting has been used. We then tested our proposed prebaiting mechanisms using a global pest (black rats, Rattus rattus) examining how uniquely marked free-living rats responded to a common yet novel monitoring technique (tracking tunnels).RESULTS: No studies in our dataset tested how prebaiting functioned. Most studies (61%) did not propose a mechanism for prebaiting, but overcoming neophobia was most commonly mentioned. We only found partial support for the overcoming neophobia hypothesis in our field test. We found the dominant mechanism operating in our system to be the 'trickle in' effect with the proportion of individuals visiting the device increasing over time. We found no support for social information transfer as a mechanism of prebaiting. CONCLUSION: Applying a mechanistic understanding of how prebaiting functions will improve the efficacy of management devices. Our results suggest that prebaiting allows time for more rats to encounter a device, hence surveys in our system would benefit from long prebaiting periods.

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Food information acquired socially overrides individual food assessment in ants

Cited by 21 publications

References 48 publications

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

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

The multi-dimensional nature of information drives prioritization of private over social information in ants

A mechanistic understanding of prebaiting to improve interaction with wildlife management devices

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