The multi-dimensional nature of information drives prioritization of private over social information in ants

T. Czaczkes, John J. Beckwith, Anna-Lena Horsch, F. Hartig
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引用次数: 27

Abstract

When personally gathered and socially acquired information conflict, animals often prioritize private information. We propose that this is because private information often contains details that social information lacks. We test this idea in an ant model. Ants using a food source learn its location and quality rapidly (private information), whereas pheromone trails (social information) provide good directional information, but lack reliable information about food quality. If this lack is indeed responsible for the choice of memory over pheromone trails, adding information that better food is available should cause foragers to switch their priority to social information. We show it does: while ants follow memory rather than pheromones when they conflict, adding unambiguous information about a better potential food source (a 2 µl droplet of good food) reverses this pattern, from 60% of ants following their memory to 75% following the pheromone trail. Using fluorescence microscopy, we demonstrate that food (and thus information) flows from fed workers to outgoing foragers, explaining the frequent contacts of ants on trails. Ants trained to poor food that contact nest-mates fed with good food are more likely to follow a trail than ants which received information about poor food. We conclude that social information may often be ignored because it lacks certain crucial dimensions, suggesting that information content is crucial for understanding how and when animals prioritize social and private information.
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信息的多维性驱使蚂蚁优先考虑私人信息而不是社会信息
当个人收集和社会获取的信息发生冲突时,动物往往优先考虑私人信息。我们认为,这是因为私人信息往往包含社交信息所缺乏的细节。我们在一个蚂蚁模型中测试这个想法。蚂蚁利用食物来源快速了解其位置和质量(私人信息),而信息素轨迹(社会信息)提供了良好的方向性信息,但缺乏可靠的食物质量信息。如果这种缺乏确实是导致觅食者选择记忆而不是信息素的原因,那么加上有更好食物的信息应该会使觅食者把他们的优先事项转向社会信息。我们证明了这一点:当它们发生冲突时,蚂蚁会跟随记忆而不是信息素,而添加关于更好的潜在食物来源的明确信息(2 μ l的好食物滴)会逆转这种模式,从60%的蚂蚁跟随记忆到75%的蚂蚁跟随信息素的踪迹。利用荧光显微镜,我们证明了食物(以及信息)从喂食的工蚁流向外出觅食的工蚁,这解释了蚂蚁在小径上的频繁接触。与接受劣质食物信息的蚂蚁相比,接受劣质食物训练的蚂蚁更有可能与喂食了优质食物的巢穴同伴联系。我们的结论是,社会信息可能经常被忽视,因为它缺乏某些关键的维度,这表明信息内容对于理解动物如何以及何时优先考虑社会和私人信息至关重要。
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