About This Project

Ant colonies use less energy as a group compared to the sum of individual energy use. We hypothesize that this phenomenon is related to the altruistic behavior that is characteristic of these eusocial species, and that changes made to either the group or individuals will effect the other. To test this, we'll be looking at how group energetics interplays with the individual behavior and colony size.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Recently we have quantified that the metabolic rate of the whole colony is lower than the sum of individual energy usages, and increases more slowly than colony size. This result indicates that sociality makes a worker more energetically efficient than living on its own, and the larger the colony is, the higher the efficiency is.

Meanwhile, ants from small groups behave like solitary foragers with few interactions; in large groups, a more complex social network appears. Moreover, during foraging only a portion of workers are active and interactive. As the group gets larger, the proportion of active workers decreases, and the interaction network structure changes accordingly.

We hypothesize that there exists a quantifiable interplay between the behavior and energetics of ant colonies.

What is the significance of this project?

In many other social organizations, the group energy usage is also lower than the sum of the individuals'. Researchers suggest that the individual interactions play a key role in the non-linearity of economies. However, despite the intensive descriptive data, it is unclear how the interactions interplay with group energetics.

In this project, using black carpenter ant colonies offers the opportunity to measure and alter colonial energetics together with the behavioral dynamics. This project will provide insight into the local behaviors of individuals that allow a group to perform collectively, and break new ground in the study of the relationship between social networks and collective performance, with potential implications toward organizations beyond the scope of social insects.

What are the goals of the project?

We will use black carpenter ant colonies. We will use state-of-art respirometry devices and a computer vision tracking technique to simultaneously measure and analyze the energetics and behavior of ants.

We try to answer 2 questions.

1. How would the group’s energetics change, if the individuals' interaction patterns are experimentally altered? We will conduct 3 kinds of manipulations: 1, changing the spatial structures of the foraging arena and distribution of food; 2, changing the group size; and 3, removing the highly interactive workers.

2. how would the individuals alter their behavior and the interaction patterns, in response to changes in the environmental factors that affect the group energetics? We will adjust food supply to change the group’s energetics.