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Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density

Interactions lie at the heart of social organization, particularly in ant societies. Interaction rates are presumed to increase with density, but there is little empirical evidence for this. We manipulated density within carpenter ant colonies of the species Camponotus pennsylvanicus by quadrupling...

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Autores principales: Modlmeier, Andreas P, Colman, Ewan, Hanks, Ephraim M, Bringenberg, Ryan, Bansal, Shweta, Hughes, David P
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6497443/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31045493
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.38473
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author Modlmeier, Andreas P
Colman, Ewan
Hanks, Ephraim M
Bringenberg, Ryan
Bansal, Shweta
Hughes, David P
author_facet Modlmeier, Andreas P
Colman, Ewan
Hanks, Ephraim M
Bringenberg, Ryan
Bansal, Shweta
Hughes, David P
author_sort Modlmeier, Andreas P
collection PubMed
description Interactions lie at the heart of social organization, particularly in ant societies. Interaction rates are presumed to increase with density, but there is little empirical evidence for this. We manipulated density within carpenter ant colonies of the species Camponotus pennsylvanicus by quadrupling nest space and by manually tracking 6.9 million ant locations and over 3200 interactions to study the relationship between density, spatial organization and interaction rates. Colonies divided into distinct spatial regions on the basis of their underlying spatial organization and changed their movement patterns accordingly. Despite a reduction in both overall and local density, we did not find the expected concomitant reduction in interaction rates across all colonies. Instead, we found divergent effects across colonies. Our results highlight the remarkable organizational resilience of ant colonies to changes in density, which allows them to sustain two key basic colony life functions, that is food and information exchange, during environmental change.
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spelling pubmed-64974432019-05-06 Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density Modlmeier, Andreas P Colman, Ewan Hanks, Ephraim M Bringenberg, Ryan Bansal, Shweta Hughes, David P eLife Ecology Interactions lie at the heart of social organization, particularly in ant societies. Interaction rates are presumed to increase with density, but there is little empirical evidence for this. We manipulated density within carpenter ant colonies of the species Camponotus pennsylvanicus by quadrupling nest space and by manually tracking 6.9 million ant locations and over 3200 interactions to study the relationship between density, spatial organization and interaction rates. Colonies divided into distinct spatial regions on the basis of their underlying spatial organization and changed their movement patterns accordingly. Despite a reduction in both overall and local density, we did not find the expected concomitant reduction in interaction rates across all colonies. Instead, we found divergent effects across colonies. Our results highlight the remarkable organizational resilience of ant colonies to changes in density, which allows them to sustain two key basic colony life functions, that is food and information exchange, during environmental change. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2019-05-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6497443/ /pubmed/31045493 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.38473 Text en © 2019, Modlmeier et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Modlmeier, Andreas P
Colman, Ewan
Hanks, Ephraim M
Bringenberg, Ryan
Bansal, Shweta
Hughes, David P
Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
title Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
title_full Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
title_fullStr Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
title_full_unstemmed Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
title_short Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
title_sort ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6497443/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31045493
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.38473
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