I smell where you walked – how chemical cues influence movement decisions in ants

Wüst, Miriam; Menzel, Florian

doi:10.1111/oik.03332

Cited by 35 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…4B). However, as some pheromone and home-range markings had already been deposited, this may act as a reassurance that ants are on the right path (Czaczkes et al, 2011;Devigne, Renon, & Detrain, 2004;Wüst & Menzel, 2017). Given that they are on the right path, reinforcing the pheromone signal provides more information in darkness, where visual information is lacking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social information is information gathered from observation of, or interaction with, other animals or their products (Dall, Giraldeau, Olsson, McNamara, & Stephens, 2005;Heyes, 1994). These may be cues, such as indications of conspecifics having recently been in a particular location (Worden & Papaj, 2005;Wüst & Menzel, 2017), or intentionally produced social signals, such as the waggle dance of honey bees or pheromone trails deposited by ants (Czaczkes, Grüter, & Ratnieks, 2015;Grüter, Balbuena, & Farina, 2008). Unless stated otherwise, in this work we follow Shannon (1948) in defining information as something which reduces uncertainty about the state of the world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Copy when uncertain: lower light levels increase trail pheromone depositing and reliance on pheromone trails in ants

et al. 2019

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Copy when uncertain: lower light levels increase trail pheromone depositing and reliance on pheromone trails in ants

et al. 2019

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“…4B). However, as some pheromone and home-range markings had already been deposited, this may act as a reassurance that ants are on the right path [6,65,66]. Given that they are on the right path, reinforcing the pheromone signal provides more information in darkness, where visual information is lacking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social information is information gathered from the behaviour of other animals [4]. These may be cues, such as evidence of conspecifics having recently been in a particular location [5,6], or intentionally produced social signals, such as the waggle dance of honey bees or pheromone trails deposited by ants [7,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Copy when uncertain: Lower light levels result in higher trail pheromone deposition and stronger reliance on pheromone trails in the ant Lasius niger

Jones

Czaczkes

Gallager

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Animals may gather information from multiple sources, and these information sources may conflict. Theory predicts that, all else being equal, reliance on a particular information source will depend on its information content relative to other sources. Information conflicts are a good area in which to test such predictions. Social insects, such as ants, make extensive use of both private information (e.g. visual route memories) and social information (e.g. pheromone trails) when attempting to locate a food source. Importantly, eusocial insects collaborate on food retrieval, so both information use and information provision may be expected to vary with the information content of alternative information sources. Many ants, such as Lasius niger, are active both day and night. Variation in light levels represents an ecologically important change in the information content of visually-acquired route information. Here, we examine information use and information provision under high light levels (3200 lux), moderate light levels simulating dusk (10 lux) and darkness (0.007 lux). Ants fail to learn the location of a food source in darkness. As light levels decrease, ants show decreasing reliance on private visual information, and increasing pheromone trail following, consistent with a ‘copy when uncertain’ strategy. In moderate light levels and darkness, pheromone deposition increases, presumably to compensate for the low information content of visual information. Varying light levels for cathemeral animals provides a powerful and ecologically meaningful method for examining information use and provision under varying levels of information content.

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“…They can also be detected by ant predators, and so this deposition is not without costs (Cárdenas et al 2012). The response ants make to detecting such markers depends on whether the cue is from a nestmate, a competing colony, or a different species altogether, because depending on the relationship between sender and receiver, it could represent a threat or useful information about the location of foraging resources (Wüst and Menzel 2016). The role of the ant species (dominant or submissive) in the local community can be key in this respect (Binz et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bayesian Superorganism: externalised memories facilitate distributed sampling

Hunt

Franks

Baddeley

2018

Preprint

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10A key challenge for any animal is to avoid wasting time by searching for resources in places it has 11 already found to be unprofitable. This challenge is particularly strong when the organism is a central 12 place forager -returning to a nest between foraging bouts -because it is destined repeatedly to 13 cover much the same ground. Furthermore, this problem will reach its zenith if many individuals 14 forage from the same central place, as in social insects. Foraging performance may be greatly 15 enhanced by coordinating movement trajectories such that each ant visits separate parts of the 16 surrounding (unknown) space. In this third of three papers, we find experimental evidence for an 17 externalised spatial memory in Temnothorax albipennis ants: chemical markers (either pheromones 18 or other cues such as cuticular hydrocarbon footprints) that are used by nestmates to mark explored 19 space. We show these markers could be used by the ants to scout the space surrounding their nest 20 more efficiently through indirect coordination. We also develop a simple model of this marking 21 behaviour that can be applied in the context of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods (see part two of 22 this series). This substantially enhances the performance of standard methods like the Metropolis-23 Hastings algorithm in sampling from sparse probability distributions (such as those confronted by 24 the ants) with little additional computational cost. Our Bayesian framework for superorganismal 25 behaviour motivates the evolution of exploratory mechanisms such as trail marking in terms of 26 enhanced collective information processing. 27 28 29 superorganism history: for example, from the random-walk type behaviour of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm 57 (Metropolis et al. 1953; Hastings 1970) to the correlated random walks produced by Hamiltonian 58 Monte Carlo (Duane et al. 1987). The performance boost provided by externalised memories, 59 discussed here, may similarly be understood as an evolutionary advancement in collective 60 information processing capabilities. 61Here, we present two main findings: (1) evidence that Temnothorax albipennis worker ants 62 avoid the footprints of nestmates during the reconnaissance of an unfamiliar space, and that this 63 enhances the efficiency of the colony-level collective exploration; (2) we develop a bio-inspired trail 64 avoidance method for the purpose of Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling that similarly uses a 65 memory of where the walker has visited to obtain a representative sample more rapidly. This 66 method is easy to implement and computationally simple, and offers significant improvements in 67 performance for the sort of sparse distributions that ants and other organisms also have to sample 68 from routinely. In the next section we introduce some more biological background on chemical 69 markers (externalised memories), but the reader familiar with this topic may proceed to the 70 Methods section. 71 72 Further biological background on chemical markers 73 In addition to expedi...

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I smell where you walked – how chemical cues influence movement decisions in ants

Cited by 35 publications

References 79 publications

Copy when uncertain: lower light levels increase trail pheromone depositing and reliance on pheromone trails in ants

Copy when uncertain: lower light levels increase trail pheromone depositing and reliance on pheromone trails in ants

Copy when uncertain: Lower light levels result in higher trail pheromone deposition and stronger reliance on pheromone trails in the ant Lasius niger

The Bayesian Superorganism: externalised memories facilitate distributed sampling

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