Greenwald Efrat, Segre Enrico, Feinerman Ofer
Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Department of Physics Services Unit, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2015 Jul 30;5:12496. doi: 10.1038/srep12496.
Eusocial societies and ants, in particular, maintain tight nutritional regulation at both individual and collective levels. The mechanisms that underlie this control are far from trivial since, in these distributed systems, information about the global supply and demand is not available to any single individual. Here we present a novel technique for non-intervening frequent measurement of the food load of all individuals in an ant colony, including during trophallactic events in which food is transferred by mouth-to-mouth feeding. Ants are imaged using a dual camera setup that produces both barcode-based identification and fluorescence measurement of labeled food. This system provides detailed measurements that enable one to quantitatively study the adaptive food distribution network. To demonstrate the capabilities of our method, we present sample observations that were unattainable using previous techniques, and could provide insight into the mechanisms underlying food exchange.
特别是群居社会和蚂蚁，在个体和群体层面都维持着严格的营养调控。这种控制背后的机制绝非微不足道，因为在这些分布式系统中，任何单个个体都无法获取有关全球供需的信息。在此，我们提出了一种新颖的技术，用于在不进行干预的情况下频繁测量蚁群中所有个体的食物负载，包括在通过口对口喂食进行食物传递的交哺过程中。使用双摄像头设置对蚂蚁进行成像，该设置既能基于条形码进行识别，又能对标记食物进行荧光测量。该系统提供详细的测量结果，使人们能够定量研究适应性食物分配网络。为了展示我们方法的能力，我们展示了使用先前技术无法获得的样本观察结果，这些结果可以深入了解食物交换背后的机制。
