INIBIOMA   20415
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN BIODIVERSIDAD Y MEDIOAMBIENTE
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
To be or not to be faithful: flexible fidelity to foraging trails in the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex lobicornis
Autor/es:
ELIZALDE, LUCIANA; FARJI-BRENER, AG
Revista:
ECOLOGICAL ENTOMOLOGY
Editorial:
WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC
Referencias:
Lugar: Londres; Año: 2012 vol. 37 p. 370 - 376
ISSN:
0307-6946
Resumen:
1. Ants using trails to forage have to select between two alternative routes
at bifurcations, using two, potentially conflicting, sources of information to make their
decision: individual experience to return to a previous successful foraging site (i.e.
fidelity) and ant traffic. In the field, we investigated which of these two types of
information individuals of the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex lobicornis Emery use to
decide which foraging route to take.
2. We measured the proportion of foraging ants returning to each trail of bifurcations
the following day, and for 4?7 consecutive days. We then experimentally increased
ant traffic on one trail of the bifurcation by adding additional food sources to examine
the effect of increased ant traffic on the decision that ants make.
3. Binomial tests showed that for 62% of the trails, ant fidelity was relatively more
important than ant traffic in deciding which bifurcation to follow, suggesting the
importance of previous experience.
4. When information conflict was generated by experimentally increasing ant traffic
along the trail with less foraging activity, most ants relied on ant traffic to decide.
However, in 33% of these bifurcations, ants were still faithful to their trail. Thus,
there is some degree of flexibility in the decisions that A. lobicornis make to access
food resources.
5. This flexible fidelity results in individual variation in the response of workers to
different levels of ant traffic, and allows the colony to simultaneously exploit both
established and recently discovered food patches, aiding efficient food gathering