Mizumoto Nobuaki, Tanaka Yasunari, Valentini Gabriele, Richardson Thomas O, Annagiri Sumana, Pratt Stephen C, Shimoji Hiroyuki
Evolutionary Genomics Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology Graduate University, Onna-son, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan.
School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Kwansei Gakuin University, Sanda, Hyogo 669-1337, Japan.
iScience. 2023 Mar 17;26(4):106418. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106418. eCollection 2023 Apr 21.
Communication is fundamental to the organization of animal societies, often resulting in the convergent evolution of similar social behavior across lineages. However, this similarity may conceal underlying functional and mechanistic differences. Here we combined network and information-theoretic analysis to quantify how tandem recruitment is distinguishable between two ant genera, and . We show that uses tandem running to recruit additional recruiters, while uses it principally to move the passive majority of their colony, a task that accomplishes with a different behavior, social carrying. Accordingly, the network structure of tandems was dissimilar to that of , instead resembling the social-carrying networks in . Furthermore, our information-theoretical analysis on movement trajectories revealed that tandem runs lack bidirectional information transfer, the signature of route learning in . By quantifying the diversity of similar communication systems, this study increases the resolution of our understanding of animal societies.
交流对于动物群体的组织至关重要，常常导致不同谱系间相似社会行为的趋同进化。然而，这种相似性可能掩盖了潜在的功能和机制差异。在这里，我们结合网络分析和信息理论分析，来量化在两个蚁属（即[具体蚁属1]和[具体蚁属2]）之间串联招募是如何区分的。我们发现，[具体蚁属1]利用串联行进招募更多的招募者，而[具体蚁属2]主要利用它来转移其蚁群中的大多数被动个体，这一任务[具体蚁属1]通过一种不同的行为——社会搬运来完成。相应地，[具体蚁属1]的串联网络结构与[具体蚁属2]的不同，反而类似于[具体蚁属3]中的社会搬运网络。此外，我们对运动轨迹的信息理论分析表明，[具体蚁属1]的串联行进缺乏双向信息传递，而双向信息传递是[具体蚁属2]中路线学习的特征。通过量化相似交流系统的多样性，本研究提高了我们对动物群体理解的分辨率。
