Pless Evlyn, Queirolo Jovel, Pinter-Wollman Noa, Crow Sam, Allen Kelsey, Mathur Maya B, Gordon Deborah M
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
BioCircuits Institute, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2015 Nov 5;10(11):e0141971. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141971. eCollection 2015.
Social insect colonies use interactions among workers to regulate collective behavior. Harvester ant foragers interact in a chamber just inside the nest entrance, here called the 'entrance chamber'. Previous studies of the activation of foragers in red harvester ants show that an outgoing forager inside the nest experiences an increase in brief antennal contacts before it leaves the nest to forage. Here we compare the interaction rate experienced by foragers that left the nest and ants that did not. We found that ants in the entrance chamber that leave the nest to forage experienced more interactions than ants that descend to the deeper nest without foraging. Additionally, we found that the availability of foragers in the entrance chamber is associated with the rate of forager return. An increase in the rate of forager return leads to an increase in the rate at which ants descend to the deeper nest, which then stimulates more ants to ascend into the entrance chamber. Thus a higher rate of forager return leads to more available foragers in the entrance chamber. The highest density of interactions occurs near the nest entrance and the entrances of the tunnels from the entrance chamber to the deeper nest. Local interactions with returning foragers regulate both the activation of waiting foragers and the number of foragers available to be activated.
群居昆虫群落利用工蚁之间的互动来调节群体行为。收获蚁觅食者在巢穴入口内侧的一个腔室中进行互动，这里称为“入口腔室”。先前对红收获蚁觅食者激活的研究表明，巢穴内即将外出的觅食者在离开巢穴去觅食之前，短暂触角接触会增加。在这里，我们比较了离开巢穴的觅食者和未离开巢穴的蚂蚁所经历的互动率。我们发现，在入口腔室中离开巢穴去觅食的蚂蚁比那些不觅食而下降到巢穴深处的蚂蚁经历了更多的互动。此外，我们发现入口腔室中觅食者的数量与觅食者返回的速率相关。觅食者返回速率的增加会导致蚂蚁下降到巢穴深处的速率增加，进而刺激更多蚂蚁上升到入口腔室。因此，更高的觅食者返回速率会导致入口腔室中有更多可用的觅食者。互动的最高密度出现在巢穴入口以及从入口腔室到巢穴深处的隧道入口附近。与返回的觅食者的局部互动既调节了等待觅食者的激活，也调节了可被激活的觅食者数量。
