4.8 Article

Ant Foragers Compensate for the Nutritional Deficiencies in the Colony

期刊

CURRENT BIOLOGY
卷 30, 期 1, 页码 135-+

出版社

CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.019

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  1. Fyssen Foundation
  2. CNRS
  3. NHMRC

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Achieving nutritional homeostasis is crucial for the fitness of all living organisms [1]. Using collective wisdom, ants have been shown to excel at making rapid and appropriate decisions under various contexts [2, 3], including foraging [4-7]. Ants often use pheromone trails to share information about food resources [8-10], a process allowing them to focus their foraging activity on the best food source available [7, 11-14]. However, what constitutes the best food source depends on the nutritional context of the colony in relation to its food environment [15]. In this study, we exposed ant colonies to various nutrient deficiencies and observed their compensatory nutritional responses. Ants were deprived of carbohydrate, sterol, protein, a subset of amino acids, or a single amino acid. We found that ants were rapidly able to match their foraging decisions to their nutritional needs, even if the deficiency concerned a single amino acid. An individual-based model demonstrates that these impressive feats of nutritional compensation can emerge from the iterative process of trail laying behavior, which relies on a simple individual decision: to eat or not to eat. Our results show that, by adjusting their feeding behavior at the individual level, ants sustain homeostasis at the colony level.

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