Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Commun Biol. 2021 May 6;4(1):535. doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-02048-7.
Economic theory predicts that organisations achieve higher levels of productivity when tasks are divided among different subsets of workers. This prediction is based upon the expectation that individuals should perform best when they specialise upon a few tasks. However, in colonies of social insects evidence for a causal link between division of labour and performance is equivocal. To address this issue, we performed a targeted worker removal experiment to disrupt the normal allocation of workers to a cooperative team task - tandem running. During a tandem run a knowledgeable leader communicates the location of a new nest to a follower by physically guiding her there. The targeted removal of prominent leaders significantly reduced tandem performance, whereas removal of prominent followers had no effect. Furthermore, analyses of the experience of both participants in each tandem run revealed that tandem performance was influenced primarily by how consistently the leader acted as a leader when the need arose, but not by the consistency of the follower. Our study shows that performance in ant teams depends largely on whether or not a key role is filled by an experienced individual, and suggests that in animal teams, not all roles are equally important.
经济理论预测，当任务分配给不同的工人子集时，组织会达到更高的生产力水平。这一预测基于这样的期望，即个人在专注于少数任务时应该表现得最好。然而，在社会性昆虫的群体中，劳动分工与绩效之间的因果关系的证据是模棱两可的。为了解决这个问题，我们进行了有针对性的工人移除实验，以破坏工人正常分配到合作团队任务——串列跑步的情况。在串列跑步中，一个有知识的领导者通过身体引导她到达新巢的位置，将新巢的位置传达给一个追随者。有针对性地移除杰出的领导者会显著降低串列的性能，而移除杰出的追随者则没有影响。此外，对每一次串列跑步中两位参与者的经验进行的分析表明，串列的性能主要受到领导者在需要时是否始终如一地发挥领导者作用的影响，而不是追随者的一致性的影响。我们的研究表明，蚂蚁团队的表现在很大程度上取决于一个关键角色是否由有经验的个体担任，这表明在动物团队中，并非所有角色都同等重要。
