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Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help

When an antlion captures a foraging ant, the victim’s nestmates may display rescue behaviour. This study tested the hypothesis that the expression of rescue behaviour depends on the life expectancy of the captured ant. This hypothesis predicts that the expression of rescue behaviour will be less fre...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Miler, Krzysztof
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4795707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26986741
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151925
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author Miler, Krzysztof
author_facet Miler, Krzysztof
author_sort Miler, Krzysztof
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description When an antlion captures a foraging ant, the victim’s nestmates may display rescue behaviour. This study tested the hypothesis that the expression of rescue behaviour depends on the life expectancy of the captured ant. This hypothesis predicts that the expression of rescue behaviour will be less frequent when the captured ant has a lower life expectancy than when it has a higher life expectancy because such a response would be adaptive at the colony level. Indeed, significant differences were found in the frequency of rescue behaviours in response to antlion victims with differing life expectancies. In agreement with prediction, victims with lower life expectancies were rescued less frequently, and those rescues had a longer latency and shorter duration. There was also a qualitative difference in the behaviour of rescuers to victims from the low and high life expectancy groups. Several explanations for these findings are proposed.
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spelling pubmed-47957072016-03-23 Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help Miler, Krzysztof PLoS One Research Article When an antlion captures a foraging ant, the victim’s nestmates may display rescue behaviour. This study tested the hypothesis that the expression of rescue behaviour depends on the life expectancy of the captured ant. This hypothesis predicts that the expression of rescue behaviour will be less frequent when the captured ant has a lower life expectancy than when it has a higher life expectancy because such a response would be adaptive at the colony level. Indeed, significant differences were found in the frequency of rescue behaviours in response to antlion victims with differing life expectancies. In agreement with prediction, victims with lower life expectancies were rescued less frequently, and those rescues had a longer latency and shorter duration. There was also a qualitative difference in the behaviour of rescuers to victims from the low and high life expectancy groups. Several explanations for these findings are proposed. Public Library of Science 2016-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4795707/ /pubmed/26986741 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151925 Text en © 2016 Krzysztof Miler http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Miler, Krzysztof
Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help
title Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help
title_full Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help
title_fullStr Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help
title_full_unstemmed Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help
title_short Moribund Ants Do Not Call for Help
title_sort moribund ants do not call for help
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4795707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26986741
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151925
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