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Ant Lasius niger joining one-way trails go against the flow

Social insects, such as ants, use various pheromones as their social signal. In addition, they use the presence of other ants for decision-making. In this study, we attempted to evaluate if individual decision-making is influenced by the complementary use of pheromones and presence of other ants. An...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sakamoto, Yuta, Sakiyama, Tomoko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8837658/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35149724
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-05879-4
Descripción
Sumario:Social insects, such as ants, use various pheromones as their social signal. In addition, they use the presence of other ants for decision-making. In this study, we attempted to evaluate if individual decision-making is influenced by the complementary use of pheromones and presence of other ants. Ants were induced to form a one-way flow system. We found that when ants entered such a system at a right angle, they tended to move in the opposite direction of the one-way flow system. Interestingly, the target ants moved randomly in the experiments in which no ant and/or no pheromone trails were present. We also developed simulation algorithms and found that artificial ant foragers could reach a certain goal more often if they adopted the reverse run (similar mechanism found in ant experiments) over the forward run (moving in the same direction as their nestmates).