INVESTIGADORES
ALMA Andrea Marina
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Between inefficiency and interference: individual and collective solution
Autor/es:
ALMA, ANDREA MARINA; ALEJANDRO GUSTAVO FARJI-BRENER; ELIZALDE, LUCIANA
Lugar:
Guarujá
Reunión:
Congreso; International Union for the Study of Social Insects XVIIIth International Congress; 2018
Institución organizadora:
International Union for the Study of Social Insects
Resumen:
In addition to the individual behaviour, social organisms also express social behaviours that allow them to solve problems that exceed individual capabilities. Many factors such as group coordination and environmental context may determine when individual and collaborative strategies are more efficient. Using the trail-clearing behaviour of leaf-cutting ants, we experimentally evaluated whether removal probability and speed of individual and collaborative trail-clearing depend on problem characteristics and context. We placed obstacles of different sizes and shapes (problem characteristics), in foraging trails with different foragers? fluxes and soil roughness (context) in 10 field nests of Atta cephalotes, and compared removal success (i.e. if ants could remove obstacles) and removal time of individual and collaborative removals. Very large obstacles could only be removed collaboratively, confirming individual limitations for transporting big objects. Regardless of obstacle shape, ants were more successful collaboratively but took longer than individually, suggesting that coordination among individuals delays collaborative actions. Regardless of ant flux, ants took longer collaboratively than individually. However, as ant flux increased, removal success was bigger for collaborative removals than for individual removals. Lastly, trail roughness had no effect. This work highlights one advantage of sociality, the option of solving collaboratively those problems that exceed the individual abilities, as well as the associated costs of joint actions, since they can be time-consuming, presumably due to the need for coordination in animals that usually do not work in teams.