A small number of workers with specific personality traits perform tool use in ants

eLife

Garyk Roelandt¹  István Maák²  Patrizia d'Ettorre³ 

[1] Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw, Poland;Department of Ecology, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary;Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology UR 4443, University Sorbonne Paris Nord, Villetaneuse, France;

关键词: foraging;    division of labour;    personality;    social insects;    Aphaenogaster senilis;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.61298

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Ants use debris as tools to collect and transport liquid food to the nest. Previous studies showed that this behaviour is flexible whereby ants learn to use artificial material that is novel to them and select tools with optimal soaking properties. However, the process of tool use has not been studied at the individual level. We investigated whether workers specialise in tool use and whether there is a link between individual personality traits and tool use in the ant Aphaenogaster senilis. Only a small number of workers performed tool use and they did it repeatedly, although they also collected solid food. Personality predicted the probability to perform tool use: ants that showed higher exploratory activity and were more attracted to a prey in the personality tests became the new tool users when previous tool users were removed from the group. This suggests that, instead of extreme task specialisation, variation in personality traits within the colony may improve division of labour.

【 授权许可】

Unknown