El mundo feliz de las hormigas

Abstract

The successful life of ants has evolved due to the division of reproductive labor among fertile (queens) and sterile individuals (workers), and to the support labor by different kinds of workers. Because of this and their age on Earth, ants represent an evolutionary issue in relation to their ability for social development and to survive natural catastrophes. The division of labor and colonial level phenomena make ants excellent neurobiological models to study the structure and the basis of behavior of their social organization and division of labor; also their species-specific behavioral adaptations and their sophisticated sensorial system specialized in the detection of chemical signals. One of the main issues for researchers is to elucidate the mechanisms by which individuals cooperate to the whole colony behavior. These properties have as physical substrate the brain, and it is in this minute organ that complex behaviors are generated and controlled. However, individual behavior is not what make ants dominant creatures in the biosphere, instead, the systemic behavior of the colony as a whole. Individual abilities have evolved in a social context, and no other animal group generates so many fascinating issues for biologists, psychologists, sociologists, physicists and mathematicians. In this paper, we briefly review what it is known about the social organization of ants and how the nervous system generate the complex patterns of social behavior.