Ant communication in most species involves pheromones, which is a method using chemical trails for other ants or insects to find and follow.[1]
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However, ants of some species can communicate without using pheromones or chemical trails in general. In particular, red wood ants are able to pass information about distant food source using antennal code alone.[2][3][4]
Communication using chemical trails
editAnts have many different pheromones, depending on the species. When an ant finds something interesting, whether it is food or an enemy, it excretes a chemical substance from it and drags it along the floor to the colony.[5]
When a different worker sets its antenna down on the trail, it senses the trail, changes its own behavior (depending on the specific pheromone) and follows it depending on what kind. If it is a food trail, the worker will follow the trail to find the food; If it does find the food, it will go back to the colony and strengthen the trail, making more and more workers to follow the trail.[6] Same thing with attacking/defending the colony, when detected, other workers will begin attacking the enemy inside a circle of pheromones, rather than a trail.
Communication without using chemical trails
editAnts of some species, such as red wood ants (Formica s.str.), are able to communicate to each other information about distant food sources using antennal code alone,[2][4] in a manner distantly similar to the dance language of bees.[7] In these species, there exist teams of constant composition.[8][9] Each team has one leader, called a scout, and about ten followers (foragers). The scout finds the food source and communicates its location to the followers. The team of followers are then able to find the food source without the scout. This fact has been established by experiments using various artificial trees, including the binary tree and others.[10] While the scout had been communicating with its team, the experimenters changed the maze to make sure the team could not use any chemical trails, and subsequently isolated the scout.[10][3]
The language these ants use is rather sophisticated: the ants adapt their communication, using shorter messages for frequently used locations and compressing some more regular messages.[4] Using a method based on measuring the time it takes the ants to communicate various messages, it has been shown that they can to use simple arithmetic operations.[8]
References
edit- ^ Chalissery, Jaime M.; Renyard, Asim; Gries, Regine; Hoefele, Danielle; Alamsetti, Santosh Kumar; Gries, Gerhard (November 2019). "Ants Sense, and Follow, Trail Pheromones of Ant Community Members". Insects. 10 (11): 383. doi:10.3390/insects10110383. PMC 6921000. PMID 31683791.
- ^ a b Reznikova, Zhanna (November 2020). "Spatial cognition in the context of foraging styles and information transfer in ants". Animal Cognition. 23 (6): 1143–1159. doi:10.1007/s10071-020-01423-x. PMID 32840698.
- ^ a b Reznikova, Zhanna (2007). Animal Intelligence: From Individual to Social Cognition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-53202-0.[page needed]
- ^ a b c Reznikova, Zhanna (26 March 2023). "Information Theory Opens New Dimensions in Experimental Studies of Animal Behaviour and Communication". Animals. 13 (7): 1174. doi:10.3390/ani13071174. PMC 10093743. PMID 37048430.
- ^ Zablotny, James E. (2009). "Sociality". Encyclopedia of Insects. pp. 928–935. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-374144-8.00246-0. ISBN 978-0-12-374144-8.
- ^ David Morgan, E. (March 2009). "Trail pheromones of ants". Physiological Entomology. 34 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3032.2008.00658.x.
- ^ Schurch, Roger; Ratnieks, Francis L. W. (2015-03-18). "The spatial information content of the honey bee waggle dance". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 3. doi:10.3389/fevo.2015.00022.
- ^ a b Reznikova, Zhanna; Ryabko, Boris (2011). "Numerical competence in animals, with an insight from ants". Behaviour. 148 (4): 405–434. doi:10.1163/000579511X568562. JSTOR 23034327.
- ^ Reznikova, Zhanna (2021-05-24). "Ants' Personality and Its Dependence on Foraging Styles: Research Perspectives". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 9. doi:10.3389/fevo.2021.661066.
- ^ a b Reznikova, Zhanna (2008). "Experimental paradigms for studying cognition and communication in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)". Myrmecological News. 11: 201–214.