Bruce Andrew I
School of Biological Science, Monash University, Melbourne 3800, Australia.
Behav Processes. 2016 Jan;122:12-5. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2015.10.021. Epub 2015 Oct 31.
Ants create nests of a size that is tailored to the number of individuals in a nest via a self-organized process. It is not yet clear how they accomplish this. Deposition and evaporation of pheromones at the digging face has been hypothesised by Deneubourg and Franks (1995) and Buhl et al. (2005) to be part of the nest construction process, with models being presented to support this contention. This hypothesis was tested by allowing groups of 5 Acromyrmex lundi workers to choose between two excavation sites, one that was freshly exposed to digging and one where digging had ceased an hour previously. It was expected that if pheromones played a role in stimulating digging, then ants would show a preference for digging in the "fresh" sites rather than the "aged" sites where the putative digging pheromone had decayed. No significant difference in digging activity between "fresh" and "aged" sites was detected. It is therefore likely that, while digging pheromones may play other roles in other parts of the digging system, they do not play an important role in regulation of soil excavation at the digging face.
蚂蚁通过一个自组织过程建造出大小适合蚁巢中个体数量的巢穴。它们是如何做到这一点的目前尚不清楚。德内布尔和弗兰克斯（1995年）以及比尔等人（2005年）推测，在挖掘面信息素的沉积和蒸发是巢穴建造过程的一部分，并提出了模型来支持这一论点。通过让5只伦氏切叶蚁工蚁组成的群体在两个挖掘地点之间进行选择来检验这一假设，一个是刚暴露可供挖掘的地点，另一个是一小时前停止挖掘的地点。预计如果信息素在刺激挖掘中起作用，那么蚂蚁会表现出更喜欢在“新的”地点挖掘，而不是在假定的挖掘信息素已经衰减的“旧的”地点挖掘。在“新的”和“旧的”地点之间未检测到挖掘活动的显著差异。因此，虽然挖掘信息素可能在挖掘系统的其他部分发挥其他作用，但它们在挖掘面土壤挖掘的调节中并不起重要作用。
