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Individual and collective foraging decisions: a field study of worker recruitment in the gypsy ant Aphaenogaster senilis

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Abstract

In social insects, the decision to exploit a food source is made both at the individual (e.g., a worker collecting a food item) and colony level (e.g., several workers communicating the existence of a food patch). In group recruitment, the recruiter lays a temporary chemical trail while returning from the food source to the nest and returns to the food guiding a small group of nestmates. We studied how food characteristics influence the decision-making process of workers changing from individual retrieving to group recruitment in the gypsy ant Aphaenogaster senilis. We offered field colonies three types of prey: crickets (cooperatively transportable), shrimps (non-transportable), and different quantities of sesame seeds (individually transportable). Colonies used group recruitment to collect crickets and shrimps, as well as seeds when they were available in large piles, while small seed piles rarely led to recruitment. Foragers were able to “measure” food characteristics (quality, quantity, transportability), deciding whether or not to recruit, accordingly. Social integration of individual information about food emerged as a colony decision to initiate or to continue recruitment when the food patch was rich. In addition, group recruitment allowed a fast colony response over a wide thermal range (up to 45°C ground temperature). Therefore, by combining both advantages of social foraging (group recruitment) and thermal tolerance, A. senilis accurately exploited different types of food sources which procured an advantage against mass-recruiting and behaviorally dominant species such as Tapinoma nigerrimum and Lasius niger.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Javier Retana for very helpful discussions on previous drafts and for providing us with some cricket transport data obtained together with Sebastià Cros, Anna Alsina, and Jordi Bosch. Julien Renault and Fernando Amor helped us during field experiments; Jordi Figuerola and Ramón Soriguer helped us with figures and bibliography; Isabel Luque and Ana Carvajal weighed the prey; Begoña Arrizabalaga was the ECODOCA Project Assistant; authorities of Doñana National Park gave the authorizations for fieldwork. We thank Jürgen Heinze and two anonymous reviewers for comments and Jacqueline Minett Wilkinson for English language editing . This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Sabbatical PR2004-0539, PR2006-0412 to X.C., Acción Integrada HF2004-0231, CGL2006-04968/BOS, and FEDER to X.C. and R.B.; EX2004-0835 to E.A.), French Ministry of Foreign affairs (PAI Picasso n° 09137XM/05 to A.L.), Université Paris Sud and CNRS (652/ 2003 to E.A.), and European Commission FP5 (Access to Research Infrastructure action of the Improving Human Potential Program in Doñana Biological Station, ECODOCA, to A.L.). All experiments comply with the Spanish current laws.

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Correspondence to Xim Cerdá.

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Communicated by J. Heinze.

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Cerdá, X., Angulo, E., Boulay, R. et al. Individual and collective foraging decisions: a field study of worker recruitment in the gypsy ant Aphaenogaster senilis . Behav Ecol Sociobiol 63, 551–562 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0690-5

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