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Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Title:		Ants combine object affordance with latent learning to make efficient foraging decisions
Author(s):		Poissonnier LA; Hartmann Y; Czaczkes TJ;
Address:		"Animal Comparative Economics Laboratory, Department of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg D-95053, Germany"
Journal Title:		Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Year:		2023
Volume:		20230821
Issue:		35
Page Number:		e2302654120 -
DOI:		10.1073/pnas.2302654120
ISSN/ISBN:		1091-6490 (Electronic) 0027-8424 (Print) 0027-8424 (Linking)
Abstract:		"The affordance of an object refers to its functional properties. For example, a bowl has the affordance of holding water, but a sieve does not. Here, we report that ants learn the affordance of a novel object without this attribute being rewarded, and use the memory of this affordance to avoid predicted, but never experienced, crowding. Ants were trained to feeders, which could support either only one ant or many. Two feeders were encountered, each of identical design but differently scented. After training, on the outward journey, half the ants encounter nestmates, which had fed on food matching one of the training feeders. Encountering returning nestmates reduced preference for the feeder matching the scent of the encountered nestmates, but only for ants trained on a limited-access feeder; ants trained on an unlimited feeder were unaffected. In other words, only if ants know that the food access is limited, and receive information that this feeder is heavily visited, do they reduce their preference for this feeder. To achieve this, the ants had to combine memories of the feeders' affordance with the presence of nestmates. Then they had to use semantic knowledge that restricted food access combined with nestmate presence predicts a likelihood of crowding, or a rule such as 'if the food is restricted and there are nestmates on the path, go to another food source.' Regardless of the mechanism, these results demonstrate that ants latently learn the affordance of their surroundings, an unexpected cognitive ability for an invertebrate"
Keywords:		Animals *Ants Learning Cognition Food Knowledge Pheromones future-oriented behavior inference latent learning object affordance;
Notes:		"MedlinePoissonnier, Laure-Anne Hartmann, Yannick Czaczkes, Tomer J eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2023/08/21 Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Aug 29; 120(35):e2302654120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2302654120. Epub 2023 Aug 21"