Effect of Interactions between Harvester Ants on Forager Decisions
Effect of Interactions between Harvester Ants on Forager Decisions
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DOI：
10.3389/fevo.2016.00115
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发表时间：
2016-01-01
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Goldman, Mark S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Davidson, Jacob D.;Arauco-Aliaga, Roxana P.;Goldman, Mark S.
收获蚁群根据食物供应的日常变化和环境条件的小时变化来调整它们的觅食活动。这种集体行为是通过相互作用来调节的，以短暂的触角接触的形式，在外出觅食和带着食物返回觅食之间。在这里，我们考虑如何蚂蚁，等待在入口室内就在巢的入口，使用其积累的经验的相互作用，以决定是否离开巢觅食。利用现场观察的视频，我们跟踪了蚂蚁在入口室内的相互作用和觅食决策。外出觅食的蚂蚁倾向于与返回觅食的蚂蚁进行互动，其互动率高于返回较深的巢穴而不觅食的蚂蚁。为了提供一个解释这些结果的机制框架，我们开发了一个决策模型，在这个模型中，蚂蚁根据与返回觅食的个体接触的嘈杂积累来做出决策。该模型可以重现核心趋势和现实的分布为个体蚂蚁的相互作用统计，并建议可能的机制，觅食活动可能会受到监管，在一个单独的蚂蚁水平。
Harvester ant colonies adjust their foraging activity to day-to-day changes in food availability and hour-to-hour changes in environmental conditions. This collective behavior is regulated through interactions, in the form of brief antennal contacts, between outgoing foragers and returning foragers with food. Here we consider how an ant, waiting in the entrance chamber just inside the nest entrance, uses its accumulated experience of interactions to decide whether to leave the nest to forage. Using videos of field observations, we tracked the interactions and foraging decisions of ants in the entrance chamber. Outgoing foragers tended to interact with returning foragers at higher rates than ants that returned to the deeper nest and did not forage. To provide a mechanistic framework for interpreting these results, we develop a decision model in which ants make decisions based upon a noisy accumulation of individual contacts with returning foragers. The model can reproduce core trends and realistic distributions for individual ant interaction statistics, and suggests possible mechanisms by which foraging activity may be regulated at an individual ant level.