Nowbahari Elise, Amirault Céline, Hollis Karen L
Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée, EA 4443, Université Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 99, Avenue J-B Clément, 93430, Villetaneuse, France.
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience and Behavior, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA, 01075-1462, USA.
Anim Cogn. 2016 May;19(3):543-53. doi: 10.1007/s10071-016-0955-8. Epub 2016 Feb 4.
Cataglyphis cursor worker ants are capable of highly sophisticated rescue behaviour in which individuals are able to identify what has trapped a nestmate and to direct their behaviour towards that obstacle. Nonetheless, rescue behaviour is constrained by workers' subcaste: whereas foragers, the oldest workers, are able both to give and to receive the most help, the youngest workers, inactives, neither give nor receive any help whatsoever; nurses give and receive intermediate levels of aid, reflecting their intermediate age. Such differences in rescue behaviour across subcastes suggest that age and experience play a critical role. In this species, as in many others in which a sensitive period for nestmate recognition exists, newly enclosed ants, called callows, are adopted by ants belonging not only to different colonies but also to different species; foreign callows receive nearly the same special care provided to resident newborns. Because callows are younger than inactives, which are incapable of soliciting rescue, we wondered whether entrapped callows would receive such aid. In the present study, we artificially ensnared individual callows from their own colony (homocolonial), from a different colony (heterocolonial), and from a different species (heterospecific), and tested each one with groups of five potential C. cursor rescuers, either all foragers or all nurses. Our results show that all three types of callows are able to elicit rescue behaviour from both foragers and nurses. Nonetheless, nurse rescuers are better able to discriminate between the three types of callow victims than are foragers.
箭蚁工蚁能够表现出高度复杂的救援行为，在这种行为中，个体能够识别困住巢友的物体，并将其行为导向该障碍物。然而，救援行为受到工蚁亚等级的限制：最年长的工蚁——觅食蚁，既能给予也能接受最多的帮助；最年轻的工蚁——不活跃蚁，既不给予也不接受任何帮助；保育蚁给予和接受的帮助处于中等水平，这反映了它们中等的年龄。亚等级之间在救援行为上的这种差异表明年龄和经验起着关键作用。在这个物种中，和许多存在巢友识别敏感期的其他物种一样，新羽化的蚂蚁，即嫩蚁，不仅会被来自不同蚁群的蚂蚁收养，还会被来自不同物种的蚂蚁收养；外来嫩蚁会得到与本巢新生蚁几乎相同的特殊照顾。由于嫩蚁比无法寻求救援的不活跃蚁更年幼，我们想知道被困的嫩蚁是否会得到这种帮助。在本研究中，我们人工诱捕来自它们自己蚁群（同巢）、不同蚁群（异巢）和不同物种（异种）的单个嫩蚁，并用每组五只潜在的箭蚁救援者对每只嫩蚁进行测试，这些救援者要么全是觅食蚁，要么全是保育蚁。我们的结果表明，这三种类型的嫩蚁都能够引发觅食蚁和保育蚁的救援行为。尽管如此，与觅食蚁相比，保育蚁救援者能够更好地区分这三种类型的嫩蚁受害者。
