The effects of age and past and present behavioral specialization on behavior of workers of the red wood ant Formica polyctena Först. during nestmate reunion tests

Korczyńska, Julita; Szczuka, Anna; Symonowicz, Beata; Wnuk, A.; Anna, Gonzalez Szwacka; Mazurkiewicz, Paweł; Studnicki, Marcin; Godzińska, Ewa Joanna

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2014.07.009

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Together with earlier studies of our team (Wnuk et al 2011 ; Korczyńska et al 2014 ), our present study belongs to a series of experiments carried out to shed more light on behavioral, neurochemical and anatomical correlates of ant behavioral reversion. In particular, we were interested if ant behavioral reversion consists solely of the induction of intranidal brood care behavior, or involves also other modifications of worker behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Behavioral reversion was also investigated in various species of ants (Ehrhardt 1931 ; Weir 1958 ; Dobrzańska 1959 ; Lenoir 1979a , b ; Sorensen et al 1984 ; McDonald and Topoff 1985 ; Wnuk et al 2011 ; Korczyńska et al 2014 ). Phenotype modifications accompanying ant behavioral reversion are, however, much less known than those documented in the honeybee.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena

et al. 2015

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Social insect workers usually start adult life from intranidal tasks and then switch to extranidal activities, but this process may be reversed: foragers may switch again to intranidal brood care. The transition forager – reverted nurse is known as the behavioral reversion. Ant foragers are known to avoid illuminated zones less strongly than intranidal workers, but illumination responses of reverted nurses were so far never investigated. We compared dark–light choice behavior of three classes of workers of the red wood ant Formica polyctena: nurses, foragers and reverted nurses. Sets of ten ants belonging to the same class were tested in “double nests” made of two interconnected test tubes, one kept in darkness and the other exposed to light. The number of ants present in the illuminated zone of each nest (ni) was recorded on 10 sample points at 30 min intervals. The values of ni were lower in nurses than in foragers and reverted nurses and decreased as a function of time in all three groups. Nurses differed from foragers with respect to the dynamics of dark–light choice behavior, but reverted nurses did not differ in that respect either from nurses, or from foragers. Reverted nurses and foragers did not differ significantly from each other with respect to the overall level of avoidance of illuminated zone, nor with respect to the dynamics of dark–light choice behavior. This implies that behavioral reversion is not accompanied by the return of illumination responses of workers of F. polyctena to the state characteristic for nurses.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena

et al. 2015

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“…If maintaining optimal conditions for the brood is vital, flexibility of workers transporting brood should minimise risks to the brood, should specialist transporters be lost 25 , 69 , 70 . Indeed, behavioural flexibility is widespread across the eusocial Hymenoptera 71 with multiple reports of flexible foraging 31 , 72 , 73 and flexible nurse and brood care behaviour 22 , 27 , 33 , 35 , 74 , 75 . Nonetheless, there are examples where flexible task allocation is not found.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Targeted worker removal reveals a lack of flexibility in brood transport specialisation with no compensatory gain in efficiency

McGregor,

Uslu,

Sakar

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

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Division of labour is widely thought to increase the task efficiency of eusocial insects. Workers can switch their task to compensate for sudden changes in demand, providing flexible task allocation. In combination with automated tracking technology, we developed a robotic system to precisely control and spatiotemporally manipulate floor temperature over days, which allowed us to predictably drive brood transport behaviour in colonies of the ant Camponotus floridanus. Our results indicate that a small number of workers, usually minors belonging to the nurse social group, are highly specialised for brood transport. There was no difference in the speed at which workers transported brood, suggesting that specialisation does not correlate with efficiency. Workers often started to transport the brood only after having identified a better location. There was no evidence that workers shared information about the presence of a better location. Notably, once brood transporters had been removed, none of the remaining workers performed this task, and the brood transport completely stopped. When brood transporters were returned to their colony, brood transport was immediately restored. Taken together, our study reveals that brood transport is an inflexible task, achieved through the synchronous actions of a few privately informed specialist workers.

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“…Some physiological mechanisms were more dependent on age, some on social role, and some on the interaction between them. As for behavior 77 , the influence of these two parameters appear to depend on the trait considered and it is their interaction that shapes the overall phenotype of the individual. Besides, our multi-omics approach highlighted evolutionary conserved mechanisms of aging (cancer, immunosenescence, poorer somatic maintenance in senescent groups, metabolic modifications).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Both age and social environment shape the phenotype of ant workers

Quque

Brun

Villette

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Position within the social group has consequences on individual lifespans in diverse taxa. This is especially obvious in eusocial insects, where workers differ in both the tasks they perform and their aging rates. However, in eusocial wasps, bees and ants, the performed task usually depends strongly on age. As such, untangling the effects of social role and age on worker physiology is a key step towards understanding the coevolution of sociality and aging. We performed an experimental protocol that allowed a separate analysis of these two factors using four groups of black garden ant (Lasius niger) workers: young foragers, old foragers, young nest workers, and old nest workers. We highlighted age-related differences in the proteome and metabolome of workers that were primarily related to worker subcaste and only secondarily to age. The relative abundance of proteins and metabolites suggests an improved xenobiotic detoxification, and a fuel metabolism based more on lipid use than carbohydrate use in young ants, regardless of their social role. Regardless of age, proteins related to the digestive function were more abundant in nest workers than in foragers. Old foragers were mostly characterized by weak abundances of molecules with an antibiotic activity or involved in chemical communication. Finally, our results suggest that even in tiny insects, extended lifespan may require to mitigate cancer risks. This is consistent with results found in eusocial rodents and thus opens up the discussion of shared mechanisms among distant taxa and the influence of sociality on life history traits such as longevity.

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The effects of age and past and present behavioral specialization on behavior of workers of the red wood ant Formica polyctena Först. during nestmate reunion tests

Cited by 18 publications

References 91 publications

Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena

Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena

Targeted worker removal reveals a lack of flexibility in brood transport specialisation with no compensatory gain in efficiency

Both age and social environment shape the phenotype of ant workers

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