| Title: | Private information alone can trigger trapping of ant colonies in local feeding optima |
| Author(s): | Czaczkes TJ; Salmane AK; Klampfleuthner FA; Heinze J; |
| Address: | "Biologie I, Universitat Regensburg, Universitatsstrasse 31, Regensburg D-93053, Germany tomer.czaczkes@biologie.uni-regensburg.de. Biologie I, Universitat Regensburg, Universitatsstrasse 31, Regensburg D-93053, Germany Department of Zoology and Animal Ecology, Faculty of Biology, University of Latvia, Jelgavas street 1, Riga LV-1004, Latvia. Biologie I, Universitat Regensburg, Universitatsstrasse 31, Regensburg D-93053, Germany" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1477-9145 (Electronic) 0022-0949 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Ant colonies are famous for using trail pheromones to make collective decisions. Trail pheromone systems are characterised by positive feedback, which results in rapid collective decision making. However, in an iconic experiment, ants were shown to become 'trapped' in exploiting a poor food source, if it was discovered earlier. This has conventionally been explained by the established pheromone trail becoming too strong for new trails to compete. However, many social insects have a well-developed memory, and private information often overrules conflicting social information. Thus, route memory could also explain this collective 'trapping' effect. Here, we disentangled the effects of social and private information in two 'trapping' experiments: one in which ants were presented with a good and a poor food source, and one in which ants were presented with a long and a short path to the same food source. We found that private information is sufficient to trigger trapping in selecting the poorer of two food sources, and may be sufficient to cause it altogether. Memories did not trigger trapping in the shortest path experiment, probably because sufficiently detailed memories did not form. The fact that collective decisions can be triggered by private information alone may require other collective patterns previously attributed solely to social information use to be reconsidered" |
| Keywords: | Animals Ants/*physiology Appetitive Behavior Choice Behavior Memory Pheromones/physiology Social Behavior Ants Group decision making Organisation Pheromone trails Social information; |
| Notes: | "MedlineCzaczkes, Tomer J Salmane, Anete K Klampfleuthner, Felicia A M Heinze, Jurgen eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't England 2016/01/10 J Exp Biol. 2016 Mar; 219(Pt 5):744-51. doi: 10.1242/jeb.131847. Epub 2016 Jan 8" |
