Ravary Fabien, Lecoutey Emmanuel, Kaminski Gwenaël, Châline Nicolas, Jaisson Pierre
Laboratory of Sub-Tropical Zoology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of the Ryukyus, 903-0213 Okinawa, Japan.
Curr Biol. 2007 Aug 7;17(15):1308-12. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.047. Epub 2007 Jul 12.
Division of labor, the specialization of workers on different tasks, largely contributes to the ecological success of social insects [1, 2]. Morphological, genotypic, and age variations among workers, as well as their social interactions, all shape division of labor [1-12]. In addition, individual experience has been suggested to influence workers in their decision to execute a task [13-18], but its potential impact on the organization of insect societies has yet to be demonstrated [19, 20]. Here we show that, all else being equal, ant workers engaged in distinct functions in accordance with their previous experience. When individuals were experimentally led to discover prey at each of their foraging attempts, they showed a high propensity for food exploration. Conversely, foraging activity progressively decreased for individuals who always failed in the same situation. One month later, workers that previously found prey kept on exploring for food, whereas those who always failed specialized in brood care. It thus appears that individual experience can strongly channel the behavioral ontogeny of ants to generate a lasting division of labor. This self-organized task-attribution system, based on an individual learning process, is particularly robust and might play an important role in colony efficiency.
分工，即工蚁在不同任务上的专业化，在很大程度上促成了群居昆虫在生态上的成功[1,2]。工蚁之间的形态、基因型和年龄差异，以及它们的社会互动，都塑造了分工[1 - 12]。此外，有研究表明个体经验会影响工蚁执行任务的决策[13 - 18]，但其对昆虫社会结构的潜在影响尚未得到证实[19,20]。在此我们表明，在其他条件相同的情况下，蚂蚁工蚁会根据它们之前的经验从事不同的职能。当个体在每次觅食尝试中通过实验引导发现猎物时，它们表现出很高的食物探索倾向。相反，在相同情况下总是失败的个体，其觅食活动会逐渐减少。一个月后，之前发现过猎物的工蚁继续探索食物，而那些总是失败的工蚁则专门负责照顾幼虫。因此，个体经验似乎能够强烈地引导蚂蚁的行为发育，从而产生持久的分工。这种基于个体学习过程的自组织任务分配系统特别稳健，可能在蚁群效率中发挥重要作用。
