Lab. Neurobiologie, CNRS, 31, Ch. J. Aiguier, 13402, Marseille, France.
J Chem Ecol. 1993 Jul;19(7):1461-77. doi: 10.1007/BF00984890.
In the antCamponotus vagus, when selected foragers that had been earlier removed from the foraging arena and brood-tenders that had been earlier removed from the nest were placed together in a foraging arena, most of the brood-tenders and only a few of the selected foragers were carried back to the nest by nonselected foragers. We hypothesize that cuticular hydrocarbons serve as a cue that allows foragers to discriminate between members of their own subcaste and brood-tenders. It has been established that the proportions of certain hydrocarbons, which are the same regardless of the colony studied, vary from one worker subcaste to another and thus constitute a specific chemical signature. These hydrocarbons belong to a wide range of chemical families (alkanes, monomethylalkanes, and dimethylalkanes). The greatest differences between the two subcastes were observed on the thorax of workers. Principal component analyses performed on the hydrocarbons (or hydrocarbon combinations) corresponding to the 45 main peaks in the cuticular profiles of the head and thorax of brood-tenders and foragers of several colonies show that there exist quantitative differences between the various signatures that characterize the colony, the worker subcastes, and the various body parts within the same species, which can be classified in a hierarchy where the differences between worker subcastes are less pronounced than those between body parts or between colonies.
在蚂蚁 Camponotus vagus 中，当选择的觅食者和已经从巢中取出的育雏者被放置在同一个觅食区域时，大多数育雏者和少数选择的觅食者被未选择的觅食者带回巢中。我们假设表皮烃作为一种线索，允许觅食者区分自己的亚种成员和育雏者。已经确定，某些表皮烃的比例在不同研究的殖民地中是相同的，从一个工蚁亚种到另一个亚种都有所不同，因此构成了一个特定的化学特征。这些碳氢化合物属于广泛的化学家族（烷烃、单甲基烷烃和二甲基烷烃）。在工蚁的胸部观察到两个亚种之间最大的差异。对育雏者和觅食者头部和胸部表皮轮廓中 45 个主要峰对应的碳氢化合物（或碳氢化合物组合）进行主成分分析表明，在不同的特征中存在定量差异，这些特征可以分为一个层次结构，其中工蚁亚种之间的差异不如身体部位之间或不同殖民地之间的差异明显。
