Large ants don't carry their fair share: Maximal load carrying performance of leaf-cutter ants (Atta cephalotes)

Abstract

Although ants are lauded for their strength, little is known about the limits of their load-carrying abilities. We determined the maximal loadcarrying capacity of leaf-cutter ants by incrementally adding mass to the leaves they carried. Maximal load-carrying ability scaled isometrically with body size, indicating that larger ants had the capacity to lift the same proportion of their body mass as smaller ants (8.78 times body mass). However, larger ants were captured carrying leaf fragments that represented a lower proportion of their body mass compared with their smaller counterparts. Therefore, when selecting leaves, larger ants retained a higher proportion of their load-carrying capacity in reserve. This suggests that either larger ants require greater power reserves to overcome challenges they encounter along the trail or leaf-cutter ants do not select loads that maximize the overall leaf transport rate of the colony.

Artifacts Caused by Leaf‐Cutting Ants of the Genus Atta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Postmortem Bite Injuries and the Tearing of Clothes

“…Also, they are known for collecting inert or unpalatable items, such as paper and plastic, which are later selected inside the nest and discarded as waste . Some Atta species are able to carry more than eight times their weight, such that larger workers may withstand loads over 500 mg . This suggests that the impact of ants in a crime scene could extend to other objects, besides clothes, as long as it is possible for these insects to cut or carry it.…”

High-performance magnetic metal microrobot prepared by a two-photon polymerization and sintering method

“…In nature, there are various outstanding porters, which can carry cargoes much heavier than their weights. 45–47 For instance, the ant is capable of transporting a heavy object, which is hundreds of times its body weight (Fig. 5a).…”

Walking kinematics in the polymorphic seed harvester ant Messor barbarus: influence of body size and load carriage

“…Therefore, it seems to us that the observed differences in carrying capacities in ants of different sizes can be well explained by the scale effect. Note that a recent study in Atta cephalotes found exactly the opposite result: that the carrying capacity is constant and independent of ant mass (Segre and Taylor, 2019). Further studies are needed in order to determine the origin of these differences.…”