Oberhauser Felix B, Wendt Stephanie, Czaczkes Tomer J
Animal Comparative Economics Laboratory, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2020 Sep 23;11:555576. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.555576. eCollection 2020.
Comparing the value of options is at the heart of economic decision-making. While an option may have an absolute quality (e.g. a food source has a fixed energy content), the perceived value of the option may be malleable. The factors affecting the perceived value of an option may thus strongly influence which option is ultimately chosen. Expectations have been shown to be a strong driver of perceived value in both humans and social insects, causing an undervaluation of a given option if a better option was expected, and an overvaluation if a poorer one was expected. In humans, perceived value can be strongly affected by social information. Value perception in some insects has also been shown to be affected by social information, showing conformism as in humans and other animals. Here, over a series of experiments, we tested whether pheromone trail presence, a social information source, influenced the perceived value of a food source in the ant . We found that the presence of pheromone trails leading to a sucrose solution does not influence food acceptance, pheromone deposition when returning from a food source, drinking time, or frequency of U-turns on return from the food. Two further assays for measuring changes in food acceptance, designed to increase sensitivity by avoiding ceiling effects, also showed no effect of pheromone presence on food acceptance. In a separate study, have also been found to show no preference for, or avoidance of, odors associated with foods found in the presence of pheromone. We are thus confident that trail pheromone presence does not affect the perceived value of a food source in these ants.
比较各种选择的价值是经济决策的核心。虽然一种选择可能具有绝对的质量（例如，一种食物来源具有固定的能量含量），但对该选择的感知价值可能是可变的。因此，影响对一种选择的感知价值的因素可能会强烈影响最终选择哪一种选择。研究表明，期望在人类和社会性昆虫中都是感知价值的强大驱动力，如果预期有更好的选择，会导致对给定选择的低估，如果预期是较差的选择，则会导致高估。在人类中，感知价值会受到社会信息的强烈影响。一些昆虫的价值感知也已被证明会受到社会信息的影响，表现出与人类和其他动物一样的从众行为。在这里，通过一系列实验，我们测试了作为一种社会信息来源的信息素踪迹的存在是否会影响蚂蚁对食物来源的感知价值。我们发现，通向蔗糖溶液的信息素踪迹的存在不会影响食物接受度、从食物来源返回时的信息素沉积、饮水时间或从食物返回时的掉头频率。另外两个旨在通过避免天花板效应来提高灵敏度的测量食物接受度变化的试验也表明，信息素的存在对食物接受度没有影响。在另一项研究中，还发现它们对与在有信息素的情况下发现的食物相关的气味没有偏好或回避。因此，我们确信，在这些蚂蚁中，踪迹信息素的存在不会影响食物来源的感知价值。
