TY - JOUR
T1 - Linking Colony Size with Foraging Behavior and Brain Investment in Odorous Ants (Formicidae
T2 - Dolichoderinae)
AU - Godfrey, R. Keating
AU - Gronenberg, Wulfila
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Drs. James Traniello, Sara Arganda, and Darcy Gordon for engaging discussions that helped guide this research. We appreciate Dr. Ellen Yerger’s generosity in providing lab space and thoughtful comments on the project and extend thanks to Dr. James Trager for providing specimens for neuroanatomical study. We are grateful to the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station for providing lab space for dissections. This work was funded by a grant from the University of Arizona Graduate Student and Professional Council (GPSC) to R.K.G. and NSF grant ISO-1354191 to W.G.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 © 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel. Copyright: All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - Superorganisms represent a unique level of biological organization in which the phenotype of the reproductive unit, the colony, results from traits expressed at the level of individual workers. Because body size scaling has important consequences for cell diversity and system complexity in solitary organisms, colony size is a trait of particular interest in superorganism evolution. In some instances, division of labor and worker polymorphism scale with colony size, but in general little is known about how colony size drives differences in individual-level behavior or neural traits. Ants represent the greatest diversity of superorganisms and provide a manner of natural experiment to test trends in trait evolution across multiple instances of colony size expansion. In this study, we control for environmental differences and worker size polymorphism to test if colony size correlates with measures of foraging behavior and brain size in dolichoderine ants. We present data from 3 species ranked by colony size. Our results suggest colony size correlates with measures of exploratory behavior and brain investment, with small-colony ants showing higher exploratory drive and faster exploration rate than the larger colony species, and greater relative investment in the primary olfactory brain region, the antennal lobe, than the larger colony species.
AB - Superorganisms represent a unique level of biological organization in which the phenotype of the reproductive unit, the colony, results from traits expressed at the level of individual workers. Because body size scaling has important consequences for cell diversity and system complexity in solitary organisms, colony size is a trait of particular interest in superorganism evolution. In some instances, division of labor and worker polymorphism scale with colony size, but in general little is known about how colony size drives differences in individual-level behavior or neural traits. Ants represent the greatest diversity of superorganisms and provide a manner of natural experiment to test trends in trait evolution across multiple instances of colony size expansion. In this study, we control for environmental differences and worker size polymorphism to test if colony size correlates with measures of foraging behavior and brain size in dolichoderine ants. We present data from 3 species ranked by colony size. Our results suggest colony size correlates with measures of exploratory behavior and brain investment, with small-colony ants showing higher exploratory drive and faster exploration rate than the larger colony species, and greater relative investment in the primary olfactory brain region, the antennal lobe, than the larger colony species.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082396556&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85082396556&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1159/000504643
DO - 10.1159/000504643
M3 - Article
C2 - 31865324
AN - SCOPUS:85082396556
VL - 95
SP - 15
EP - 24
JO - Brain, Behavior and Evolution
JF - Brain, Behavior and Evolution
SN - 0006-8977
IS - 1
ER -