Abstract
The paper is devoted to analyzing consistent individual differences in behavior, also known as “personalities,” in the context of a vital ant task—the detection and transportation of food. I am trying to elucidate the extent to which collective cognition is individual-based and whether a single individual’s actions can suffice to direct the entire colony or colony units. The review analyzes personalities in various insects with different life cycles and provides new insights into the role of individuals in directing group actions in ants. Although it is widely accepted that, in eusocial insects, colony personality emerges from the workers’ personalities, there are only a few examples of investigations of personality at the individual level. The central question of the review is how the distribution of behavioral types and cognitive responsibilities within ant colonies depends on a species’ foraging style. In the context of how workers’ behavioral traits display during foraging, a crucial question is what makes an ant a scout that discovers a new food source and mobilizes its nestmates. In mass recruiting, tandem-running, and even in group-recruiting species displaying leadership, the division of labor between scouts and recruits appears to be ephemeral. There is only little, if any, evidence of ants’ careers and behavioral consistency as leaders. Personal traits characterize groups of individuals at the colony level but not performers of functional roles during foraging. The leader-scouting seems to be the only known system that is based on a consistent personal difference between scouting and foraging individuals.
Highlights
In more than 14,000 ant species (Bolton, 2020), foraging styles vary from solitary foraging to cooperative arrangements based on information transfer
There are several other terms placed under the umbrella of “animal personality” such as “behavioral syndrome,” “coping style,” “pace-of-life syndromes;” each of them describes different aspects of behavioral phenotypes (Beekman and Jordan, 2017)
The present review considers the individual ant as a nestmate worker and behavioral castes in monomorphic ant species as a basis for analyzing worker personalities
Summary
In more than 14,000 ant species (Bolton, 2020), foraging styles vary from solitary foraging to cooperative arrangements based on information transfer (reviews in Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990, 2009; Jackson and Ratnieks, 2006; Heinze, 2008; Leonhardt et al, 2016; Reznikova, 2020). The present review considers the individual ant as a nestmate worker and behavioral castes in monomorphic ant species as a basis for analyzing worker personalities Even with these restrictions, it is worth noting that the causes of behavioral differences within ant colonies are often difficult to reveal and explain. In the polyandrous desert ant Cataglyphis cursor, workers belonging to different patrilines differ in their propensity to perform a given task such as foraging, nest construction, waste management, or food storage (Eyer et al, 2013) With all these complexities of social insects’ colonies organization in mind, it is challenging to search for such answers as to which extent collective cognition is individual-based and whether a single individual’s actions can direct the entire colony or at least colony units. This paper does not present final answers; it provides new insights into individuals’ role in the direction of group actions in ants and charts some perspectives for studying ants’ personalities in the context of foraging styles
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