Group-level dynamics in harvester ants: young colonies and the role of patrolling

Gordon, Deborah M.

doi:10.1016/s0003-3472(87)80119-7

Cited by 83 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Depleted nectar stores increase the chances of colony failure, not through starvation but through increased vulnerability to predators and social parasitism as nest defence by the workers is weakened (Cartar and Dill 1991). In harvester ants, there is no clear relationship between survival from one year to the next and foraging activity during the preceding summer (Gordon 1990). 1993 More detailed data are available for the honey bee.…”

Section: The Colony and Its State Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An important characteristic of social insects is documented by the work of Gordon (1986Gordon ( , 1987Gordon ( , 1989Gordon ( , 1990. In a series of experiments, she showed that perturbation of one activity (e.g.…”

Section: Januaryifebmary 1993mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, activities can be ordered according to priorities. In the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex, foraging has very high priority and is only mildly affected by obstruction of other activities (Gordon 1986). Thus, flexibility on the individual level combined with hierarchical task evaluation adds further complexity and may mask any direct link between colony state and individual behavior.…”

Section: Januaryifebmary 1993mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On a more general level, Wilson and H6lldobler (1988) suggest that insect societies are organized in dense heterarchies, involving redundant chains of activities organized in series or parallel (see also Ostet and Wilson 1978;Herbers 198 1;Gordon 1989). Although this could explain much of the observed resilience of the colony as well as the seemingly erratic performance of individuals, there is as yet no direct indication of how colony state should affect individual hehavior under these conditions.…”

Section: Mechanisms Of Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Invitation Paper (C.P. Alexander Fund): Foraging of Individual Workers in Relation to Colony State in the Social Hymenoptera

Schmid‐Hempel¹,

Winston

Ydenberg

1993

Can Entomol

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The Canadian Entomolo~isr 125: 12%160 (1993) Workers of social insects are members of colonies that survive and reproduce together. Therefore, the behavioral activities of individual workers should be integrated with colony state. We here summarize and discuss the relationship between colony state and foraging behavior of individual workers under the provisional assumption that the colony is a unit. We argue that colony state can be described by a number of variables that should relate to fitness components in order to be meaningful. Among the possible candidates, colony population size seems to have an overriding importance in many respects, as shown by its relation to fitness components such as survival probability and reproductive performance. Other important variables include colony demography, i.e. caste or size distributions, nutritional status, or queen number. Each of these variables has been shown to affect fitness components; however, the evidence is rather scanty. We also discuss the evidence that variation in colony state variables relates to variation in individual worker behavior. Nutritional status (i.e. low or high levels of food stores) and colony size have been shown repeatedly to affect individual behavior. However, most of the evidence comes from the honey bee. Some studies suggest that behavioral responses are hierarchically structured. More work needs to be done to investigate the actual mechanisms of integration of individual behavior with colony state. Some knowledge has accumulated about the processes that govern recruitment to food sources. We conclude this review by discussing some concepts and problems for further research. These include the concept of a preferred colony state to which the colony should return after disturbance through the behavioral activities of the workers. Further theoretical elaboration and empirical investigations may help to elucidate whether this concept is useful and necessary. A largely neglected issue concerns the number versus effort problem, i.e. whether individuals should work harder or more workers should be allocated to a task that is in demand. We propose a simple scenario that suggests testable predictions. Finally, we discuss how colony state, individual work load, and the dependence of worker mortality rate on activity level may interact to generate different short-term foraging strategies that workers should adopt. ResumeChez les insectes sociaux, les ouvrikres appartiennent i une colonie ou la survie et la reproduction sont des phknombnes collectifs. Les activitks comportementales de chacune des ouvribres font donc partie intkgrante de l'ktat de la colonie. La relation entre I'ktat de la colonie et le comportement de qu&te de nourriture d'ouvrikres particulikres est dkfinie et examinee dans le cadre de l'hypothkse selon laquelle la colonie fonctionne comme une unitk. Nous croyons que I'ktat de la colonie peut &tre dkcrit par un certain nombre de variables qui n'ont de sens que si elles sont relikes aux composantes du "fitness." Parmi l...

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Section: The Colony and Its State Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Januaryifebmary 1993mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Januaryifebmary 1993mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mechanisms Of Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Invitation Paper (C.P. Alexander Fund): Foraging of Individual Workers in Relation to Colony State in the Social Hymenoptera

Schmid‐Hempel¹,

Winston

Ydenberg

1993

Can Entomol

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“…Finally, colony behavior may change with age. For instance, in harvester ants, older colonies were found to be more stable to perturbation and more homeostatic (Gordon 1987).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A proactive–reactive syndrome affects group success in an ant species

Blight

Díaz-Mariblanca

Cerdá

et al. 2015

BEHECO

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Social insects have been particularly evolutionarily successful: they dominate terrestrial ecosystems all over the globe. Their success stems from their social organization, where one or a few individuals reproduce, whereas others carry out different colony tasks. From an evolutionary standpoint, social species are particularly interesting because natural selection acts at both the individual and colony levels. Therefore, we might expect to see selection acting simultaneously on personality at the individual level and colony level. In this study, we tested whether captive colonies of the ant Aphaenogaster senilis exhibited different behavioral types and evaluated their consequences for intraspecific competition. Our results demonstrate that colonies of the same age exposed to standardized laboratory conditions did indeed have different personalities. In addition, we found that A. senilis demonstrated a behavioral syndrome that included proactive and reactive behaviors: colonies varied in their approaches to exploration, risk taking, food retrieval, and conspecific interactions. This syndrome appears to be associated with a trade-off between competition for food resources and temperaturerelated foraging risks. "Bold" colonies contained individuals who more readily explored novel environments, exhibited aggressive behaviors, and demonstrated higher food-retrieval efficiency during intraspecific competition trials. However, such colonies were also more risk prone: workers suffered higher mortality rates because they more frequently foraged over their critical thermal maximum. The trade-off we observed under laboratory conditions might be key in maintaining colony-level personality, thus driving local-level adaptations in collective behavior.

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The organization of work in social insect colonies

Gordon

2002

Complexity

Self Cite

146

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A social insect colony operates without any central control; no one is in charge, and no colony member directs the behavior of another. A worker cannot assess the needs of the colony. How do individual workers, using fairly simple, local information, in the aggregate produce the behavior of colonies? The dynamics of colony behavior results in task allocation [1]. Colonies perform various tasks, such as foraging, care of the young, and nest construction. As environmental conditions and colony needs change, so do the numbers of workers engaged in each task. For example, when more food is available or there are more larvae to feed, more foragers may work to collect food. Task allocation is the process that adjusts the numbers of workers engaged in each task in a way appropriate to the current situation.I study task allocation in harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) [2]. Inside the nest, ants care for the brood (the preadult forms: eggs, larvae, and pupae); process and store seeds; construct and maintain chambers; and simply stand around doing nothing. The ants that work outside the nest are a distinct group, apparently older than the interior workers. I divide the behavior I see outside the nest into four tasks: foraging, searching for and retrieving food; patrolling, assessing food supply and the presence of foragers from neighboring colonies; midden work, sorting the colony refuse pile or midden; and nest maintenance work, the construction and clearing of chambers inside the underground nest.

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Group-level dynamics in harvester ants: young colonies and the role of patrolling

Cited by 83 publications

References 13 publications

Invitation Paper (C.P. Alexander Fund): Foraging of Individual Workers in Relation to Colony State in the Social Hymenoptera

Invitation Paper (C.P. Alexander Fund): Foraging of Individual Workers in Relation to Colony State in the Social Hymenoptera

A proactive–reactive syndrome affects group success in an ant species

The organization of work in social insect colonies

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