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Title
Division of labor and the regulation of house hunting and foraging in the rock cavity ant Temnothorax rugatulus.
Description
Division of labor among task specialists is a key feature of the organization of insect societies. Foraging and emigration are two distinct colony tasks that nonetheless depend on very similar behaviors, including searching outside the nest, evaluating discoveries, and recruiting nestmates. These subtasks are crucial to collective decisions about forager allocation and nest site selection. It remains unclear, however, whether the same ants are responsible for similar behavior in both contexts, and to what degree they show finer specializations among common subtasks. We are investigating these issues in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus, by making detailed behavioral descriptions of individually marked colonies as they forage and emigrate. There exists considerable heterogeneity among nest-movers, with a small proportion consistently responsible for a large share of recruitment. We found a similar pattern of heterogeneity amongst ants retrieving food during foraging, but had inconclusive results when examining recruitment to the food. It also appears that the ants that complete tasks during foraging are different from the ants that complete similar tasks during emigrations. These findings will shed light on the organization of division of labor and how it contributes to collective decision-making.
Date Created
2013-05
Contributors
- Schaper, Gage (Contributor)
- Pratt, Stephen (Thesis director)
- Fewell, Jennifer (Committee member)
- Shaffer, Zachary (Committee member)
- Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Resource Type
Extent
16 pages
Language
eng
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Series
Academic Year 2012-2013
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.25203
Level of coding
minimal
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System Created
- 2017-10-30 02:50:57
System Modified
- 2021-07-16 10:38:41
- 3 years 4 months ago
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