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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on December 3, 2007
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arm125
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The short-term regulation of foraging in harvester ants

Deborah M. Gordona, Susan Holmesb and Serban Nacub

a Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA b Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4065, USA

Address correspondence to D.M. Gordon. E-mail: dmgordon{at}stanford.edu.


  Abstract

In the seed-eating ant Pogonomyrmex barbatus, the return of successful foragers stimulates inactive foragers to leave the nest. The rate at which successful foragers return to the nest depends on food availability; the more food available, the more quickly foragers will find it and bring it back. Field experiments examined how quickly a colony can adjust to a decline in the rate of forager return, and thus to a decline in food availability, by slowing down foraging activity. In response to a brief, 3- to 5-min reduction in the forager return rate, foraging activity usually decreased within 2–3 min and then recovered within 5 min. This indicates that whether an inactive forager leaves the nest on its next trip depends on its very recent experience of the rate of forager return. On some days, colonies responded more to a change in forager return rate. The rapid colony response to fluctuations in forager return rate, enabling colonies to act as risk-averse foragers, may arise from the limited interval over which an ant can track its encounters with returning foragers.

Key words: foraging dynamics, interaction network, risk sensitivity.

Received 31 January 2007; revised 23 October 2007; accepted 24 October 2007.


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