Tall trails: ants resolve an asymmetry of information and capacity in collective maintenance of infrastructure
Section snippets
Methods
The experiment was performed on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) and mainland Panama during 10 March – 3 April 2014, between 0845 and 1830 hours with colonies of A. colombica. Because of local field conditions at the time, especially a decline in the density of A. colombica colonies on BCI, collecting a broad sample population was not possible. One large colony with multiple trails was the subject of most replicates (N = 23). Additionally, a colony from the mainland was sampled once and a second
Results
The mean (±SD) speed of laden ants during transit of the experimental apparatus was significantly slower for the obstruction treatment (2.03 ± 0.97 cm/s, N = 50) than for the no-obstruction (2.93 ± 1.05 cm/s, N = 52) or visual cue (2.87 ± 0.89 cm/s, N = 52) treatments, while the transit speeds in the latter two treatments did not differ significantly from each other (ANOVA: F2,151 = 6.734, P < 0.001, with Tukey's post hoc tests to confirm pairwise differences at an overall significance level of 0.05). None of the
Discussion
The results demonstrate that unladen ants attempt to remove an overhead obstruction at a significantly higher rate when their laden colonymates are slowed by an obstruction (Fig. 3). Unladen ants were not simply responding at a fixed rate to any potential barrier on or above the trail regardless of whether laden ants were affected, as shown by the significantly higher rate of clearing attacks for the obstruction treatment compared to the no-obstruction treatment (Fig. 3). Secondly, ants are not
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Monash University Dean's Scholarship to A.I.B. Thanks go to the Smithsonian Institute for providing access to Barro Colorado Island. T.J.C. was funded by an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship and a DFG Emmy Noether group leader grant (grant number CZ 237/1-1).
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