IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0070888.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fast and Flexible: Argentine Ants Recruit from Nearby Trails

Author

Listed:
  • Tatiana P Flanagan
  • Noa M Pinter-Wollman
  • Melanie E Moses
  • Deborah M Gordon

Abstract

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) live in groups of nests connected by trails to each other and to stable food sources. In a field study, we investigated whether some ants recruit directly from established, persistent trails to food sources, thus accelerating food collection. Our results indicate that Argentine ants recruit nestmates to food directly from persistent trails, and that the exponential increase in the arrival rate of ants at baits is faster than would be possible if recruited ants traveled from distant nests. Once ants find a new food source, they walk back and forth between the bait and sometimes share food by trophallaxis with nestmates on the trail. Recruiting ants from nearby persistent trails creates a dynamic circuit, like those found in other distributed systems, which facilitates a quick response to changes in available resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Tatiana P Flanagan & Noa M Pinter-Wollman & Melanie E Moses & Deborah M Gordon, 2013. "Fast and Flexible: Argentine Ants Recruit from Nearby Trails," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-7, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0070888
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0070888
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0070888
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0070888&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0070888?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nigel R. Franks & Tom Richardson, 2006. "Teaching in tandem-running ants," Nature, Nature, vol. 439(7073), pages 153-153, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arjun Chandrasekhar & James A R Marshall & Cortnea Austin & Saket Navlakha & Deborah M Gordon, 2021. "Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(10), pages 1-24, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alexandre Bluet & François Osiurak & Nicolas Claidière & Emanuelle Reynaud, 2022. "Impact of technical reasoning and theory of mind on cumulative technological culture: insights from a model of micro-societies," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Patrik Byholm & Martin Beal & Natalie Isaksson & Ulrik Lötberg & Susanne Åkesson, 2022. "Paternal transmission of migration knowledge in a long-distance bird migrant," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-7, December.
    3. Dominique Guillo & Nicolas Claidière, 2020. "Do guide dogs have culture? The case of indirect social learning," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    4. Juliet Dunstone & Christine A. Caldwell, 2018. "Cumulative culture and explicit metacognition: a review of theories, evidence and key predictions," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-11, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0070888. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.