Foraging through multiple nest holes: An impediment to collective decision-making in ants

PLoS One. 2020 Jul 1;15(7):e0234526. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234526. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

In social insects, collective choices between food sources are based on self-organized mechanisms where information about resources are locally processed by the foragers. Such a collective decision emerges from the competition between pheromone trails leading to different resources but also between the recruiting stimuli emitted by successful foragers at nest entrances. In this study, we investigated how an additional nest entrance influences the ability of Myrmica rubra ant colonies to exploit two food sources of different quality (1M and 0.1M sucrose solution) and to select the most rewarding one. We found that the mobilisation of workers doubled in two-entrance nests compared to one-entrance nests but that ants were less likely to reach a food source once they exited the nest. Moreover, the collective selection of the most rewarding food source was less marked in two-entrance nests, with foragers distributing themselves evenly between the two feeders. Ultimately, multiple nest entrances reduced the foraging efficiency of ant colonies that consumed significantly less sugar out of the two available resources. Our results highlight that the nest structure, more specifically the number of nest entrances, can impede the ant's ability to process information about environmental opportunities and to select the most rewarding resource. This study opens new insights on how the physical interface between the nest interior and the outside environment can act upon collective decision-making and foraging efficiency in self-organized insect societies.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Ants / metabolism
  • Behavior, Animal / physiology*
  • Decision Making / physiology*
  • Feeding Behavior / physiology*
  • Female
  • Food
  • Male
  • Models, Biological
  • Pheromones
  • Reward
  • Social Behavior

Substances

  • Pheromones

Grants and funding

M.L. was supported by a Belgian PhD Grant from the F.R.I.A. (Fonds pour la formation à la Recherche dans l’Industrie et dans l’Agriculture). C.D. is Research Director from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-F.N.R.S). This paper was published with the Financial support of the "Fondation Universitaire de Belgique " and of the grant N°CDR J.0053.18F from FRS-FNRS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.