Individual and Group Personalities Characterise Consensus Decision-Making in an Ant
Individual and Group Personalities Characterise Consensus Decision-Making in an Ant
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DOI：
10.1111/eth.12386
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发表时间：
2015-07-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Cronin, Adam L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cronin, Adam L.
非人类的动物可以像人类一样，在个体之间表现出独特的行为。具有特定个性的动物在某些环境中可能具有优势，因此这种特质可能具有相当大的生态和进化重要性。在群居生物体中，个性既可以发生在群体层面，也可以发生在个体层面。然而，目前我们对群体层面人格的可能好处以及这与个体人格之间的联系知之甚少。在这项研究中，我考察了个体和群体人格在日本蚂蚁群体迁移过程中的影响。这些蚂蚁在寻找新家时，会使用协商一致的决策过程在备选方案中做出决定。个体通过寻找新的筑巢地点，通过铺设信息素踪迹来招募筑巢伙伴，以及将幼崽带到新的地点，对这一过程做出了贡献，尽管这些角色在个体之间是否一致，以及角色在群体内部和群体之间的分配尚不清楚。个体对筑巢地点选择过程的贡献在五个群体中的五次重复重新定位中被量化。结果表明，在殖民地内部，对搬迁努力的贡献是高度倾斜的，并且个体在反复搬迁事件中的贡献是一致的。此外，努力的分配在不同的群体之间是不同的，这表明群体间行为类型组成的差异导致群体水平的人格。虽然在简单的实验安排中，这些差异没有导致群体之间在重新定位方面的任何可检测到的差异，但在更复杂的环境中，群体个性可能会影响决策结果。
Non-human animals can exhibit idiosyncratic behaviour across individuals in much in the same way as humans. Animals with specific personalities may have advantages in some environments, and this idiosyncrasy may thus be of considerable ecological and evolutionary importance. In group-living organisms, personality can occur at the level of the group as well as that of the individual. However, at present, we have very little understanding of the possible benefits of group-level personality, and how this is linked with individual personality. In this study, I examine the influence of individual and group personality during the process of colony migration in the Japanese ant, Myrmecina nipponica. These ants use a consensus decision process to decide among alternatives when searching for a new home. Individuals contribute to this process by scouting for new nest sites, recruiting nestmates by laying pheromone trails, and carrying brood to the new site, although whether these roles are consistent among individuals and how roles are distributed within and between colonies remain unclear. Individual contributions to the nest-site selection process were quantified over five repeated relocations in five colonies. Results demonstrate that contributions to the relocation effort were highly skewed within the colonies and that individuals were consistent in their contributions over repeated relocation events. Furthermore, the distribution of effort differed between colonies, indicating that intercolony differences in composition of behavioural types resulted in colony-level personality. While these differences did not lead to any detectable difference in relocation performance between colonies in the simple experimental arrangement used, colony personality could influence decision outcomes in more complex environments.