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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beckers R, Goss S, Deneubourg JL, Pasteels JM (1989) Colony size, communication and ant foraging strategy. Psyche 96:239–256
Begon M, Harper JL, Townsend CR (2006) Ecology: from individuals to ecosystems, 4th edn. Blackwell, Oxford
Bonabeau E (1997) Flexibility at the edge of chaos: a clear example from foraging in ants. Acta Biotheoretica 45:29–50
Bonabeau E, Theraulaz G, Deneubourg JL (1998) The synchronization of recruitment-based activities in ants. BioSystems 45:195–211
Boulay R, Hefetz A, Devers S, Cerdá X, Francke W, Twele R, Lenoir A (2007) Sexual production in a fission-performing ant: dual effects of queen pheromones and colony size. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 61:1531–1541
Breed MD, Fewell JH, Moore AJ, Williams KR (1987) Graded recruitment in a ponerine ant. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 20:407–411
Cagniant H, Espadaler X, Colombel P (1991) Biométrie et répartition de quelques populations d'Aphaenogaster (suprasp.) senilis (Hymenopteres Formicidae) du Bassin Méditerranéen Occidental et du Maroc. Vie Milieu 41:61–71
Cerdá X, Retana J (1997) Links between worker polymorphism and thermal biology in a thermophilic ant species. Oikos 78:467–474
Cerdá X, Bosch J, Alsina A, Retana J (1988) Dietary spectrum and activity patterns of Aphaenogaster senilis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Ann Soc Entomol Fr 24:69–75
Cerdá X, Retana J, Cros S (1997) Thermal disruption of transitive hierarchies in Mediterranean ant communities. J Anim Ecol 66:363–374
Cerdá X, Retana J, Cros S (1998a) Critical thermal limits in Mediterranean ant species: trade-off between mortality risk and foraging performance. Funct Ecol 12:45–55
Cerdá X, Retana J, Cros S (1998b) Prey size reverses the outcome of interference interactions of scavenger ants. Oikos 81:99–110
Cros S, Cerdá X, Retana J (1997) Spatial and temporal variations in the activity patterns of Mediterranean ant communities. Ecoscience 4:269–278
Cogni R, Oliveira PS (2004) Recruitment behavior during foraging in the neotropical ant Gnamptogenys moelleri (Formicidae: Ponerinae): does the type of food matter? J Insect Behav 17:443–458
Dejean A, Le Breton J, Suzzoni JP, Orivel J, Saux-Moreau C (2005) Influence of interspecific competition on the recruitment behavior and liquid food transport in the tramp ant species Pheidole megacephala. Naturwissenschaften 92:324–327
Detrain C, Deneubourg JL (1997) Scavenging by Pheidole pallidula: a key for understanding decision-making systems in ants. Anim Behav 53:537–547
Feener DH Jr (2000) Is the assembly of ant communities mediated by parasitoids? Oikos 90:79–88
Gordon DM (1991) Behavioral flexibility and the foraging ecology of seed-eating ants. Am Nat 138:379–411
Gordon DM (1996) The organization of work in social insect colonies. Nature 380:121–124
Gordon DM (2007) Control without hierarchy. Nature 446:143
Gordon DM, Holmes S, Nacu S (2008) The short-term regulation of foraging in harvester ants. Behav Ecol 19:217–222
Herbers JM (1981) Reliability theory and foraging by ants. J Theor Biol 89:175–189
Herbers JM, Choinière E (1996) Foraging behaviour and colony structure in ants. Anim Behav 51:141–153
Herrera CM (1997) Thermal biology and foraging responses of insect pollinators to the forest floor irradiance mosaic. Oikos 78:601–611
Herrera CM (2000) Flower-to-seedling consequences of different pollination regimes in an insect-pollinated shrub. Ecology 81:15–29
Johnson CA, Lommelen E, Allard D, Gobin B (2003) The emergence of collective foraging in the arboreal Gnamptogenys menadensis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Naturwissenschften 90:332–336
Lenoir L (2002) Can wood ants distinguish between good and bad food patches on the forest floor? Eur J Soil Biol 38:97–102
Lopes JFS, Forti LC, Camargo RS (2004) The influence of the scout upon the decision-making process of recruited workers in three Acromyrmex species (Formicidae: Attini). Behav Proc 67:471–476
Mailleux AC, Deneubourg JL, Detrain C (2000) How do ants assess food volume? Anim Behav 59:1061–1069
Mailleux AC, Deneubourg JL, Detrain C (2003) Regulation of ants’ foraging to resource productivity. Proc R Soc Lond B 270:1609–1616
Morgan ED (1984) Chemical words and phrases in the language of pheromones for foraging and recruitment. In: Lewis T (ed) Insect communication (12th Symp Roy Entomol Soc London). Academic, London, pp 169–194
Nonacs P, Dill LM (1990) Mortality risk vs. food quality trade-off in a common currency: ant patch preferences. Ecology 71:1886–1892
Orians GH, Pearson NE (1979) On the theory of central place foraging. In: Horn DJ, Mitchell RD, Stains GR (eds) Analysis of ecological systems. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, pp 154–177
Oster GF, Wilson EO (1978) Caste and ecology in the social insects. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Portha S, Deneubourg JL, Detrain C (2002) Self-organized asymmetries in ant foraging: a functional response to food type and colony needs. Behav Ecol 13:776–781
Portha S, Deneubourg JL, Detrain C (2004) How food type and brood influence foraging decisions of Lasius niger scouts. Anim Behav 68:115–122
Pratt SC (2008) Efficiency and regulation of recruitment during colony emigration by the ant Temnothorax curvispinosus. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62:1369–1376
Pratt SC, Mallon EB, Sumpter DJT, Franks NR (2002) Quorum sensing, recruitment, and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 52:117–127
Pyke GH (1984) Optimal foraging theory: a critical review. Ann Rev Ecol Syst 15:523–575
Retana J, Cerdá X, Espadaler X (1991) Arthropod corpses in a temperate grassland, a limited supply? Holarct Ecol 14:63–67
Roces F, Hölldobler B (1994) Leaf density and a trade-off between load-size selection and recruitment behavior in the ant Atta cephalotes. Oecologia 97:1–8
Roulston TH, Silverman J (2002) The effect of food size and dispersion pattern on retrieval rate by the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). J Insect Behav 15:633–648
Ruano F, Tinaut A, Soler JJ (2000) High surface temperatures select for individual foraging in ants. Behav Ecol 11:396–404
Sanders NJ, Gordon DM (2002) Resources and the flexible allocation of work in the desert ant, Aphaenogaster cockerelli. Insect Soc 49:371–379
SAS Institute Inc (1999) User's guide, version 8. SAS Institute, Cary
Schafer RJ, Holmes S, Gordon DM (2006) Forager activation and food availability in harvester ants. Anim Behav 71:815–822
Schatz B, Lachaud JP, Beugnon G (1997) Graded recruitment and hunting strategies linked to prey weight and size in the ponerine ant Ectatomma ruidum. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 40:337–349
Sendova-Franks AB, Franks NR (1995) Division of labour in a crisis: task allocation during colony emigration in the ant Leptothorax unifasciatus (Latr.). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 36:269–282
Thomas ML, Framenau VW (2005) Foraging decisions of individual workers vary with colony size in the greenhead ant Rhytidoponera metallica (Formicidae, Ectatomminae). Insectes Soc 52:26–30
Toda MJ, Kimura MT, Tuno N (1999) Coexistence mechanism of mycophagous drosophilids on multispecies fungal hosts: aggregation and resource partitioning. J Anim Ecol 68:794–803
Traniello JFA, Beshers SN (1991) Polymorphism and size-pairing in the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex badius: a test of the ecological release hypothesis. Insect Soc 38:121128
Wilson EO (1971) The insect societies. Belknap University Press, Cambridge
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by J. Heinze.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0690-5