Do ants make direct comparisons?

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volumn 276, Issue 1667, 2009, Pages 2635-2641

  Robinson, Elva J H ^a   Smith, Faith D ^a   Sullivan, Kathryn M E ^a   Franks, Nigel R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Collective decision; Comparison; Emigration; Radio frequency identification; Sequential search; Temnothorax

Indexed keywords

ANT; COMPARATIVE STUDY; EMIGRATION; NEST SITE; SITE SELECTION;

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR; ANT; ARTICLE; DECISION MAKING; HABITAT QUALITY; MIGRATION; NESTING; NONHUMAN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; RADIOFREQUENCY; TEAMWORK; TEMNOTHORAX ALBIPENNIS;

FORMICIDAE; LEPTOTHORAX ALBIPENNIS; TEMNOTHORAX;

EID: 67650422378     PISSN: 09628452     EISSN: 14712970     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0350     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Amé, J. M., Halloy, J., Rivault, C., Detrain, C. & Deneubourg, J. L. 2006 Collegial decision making based on social amplification leads to optimal group formation. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 5835-5840. (doi:10.1073/pnas.0507877103)
2. Bateson, M. & Healy, S. D. 2005 Comparative evolution and its implications for mate choice. Trends Ecol. Evol. 20, 659-664. (doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.08.013)
3. Bourke, A. F. G. & Franks, N. R. 1995 Social evolution in ants. Monographs in Behaviour and Ecology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
4. Briscoe, A. D. & Chittka, L. 2001 The evolution of color vision in insects. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 46, 471-510. (doi:10.1146/annurev. ento.46.1.471)
5. Camazine, S., Visscher, P. K., Finley, J. & Vetter, R. S. 1999 House-hunting by honey bee swarms: collective decisions and individual behaviours. Insectes Soc. 46, 348-360. (doi:10.1007/s000400050156)
6. Conradt, L. & List, C. 2009 Group decisions in humans and animals: a survey. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 719-742. (doi:10.1098/rstb. 2008.0276)
7. Conradt, L. & Roper, T. J. 2005 Consensus decision-making in animals. Trends Ecol. Evol. 20, 449-456. (doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.05.008)
8. Conradt, L. & Roper, T. J. 2007 Democracy in animals: the evolution of shared group decisions. Proc. R. Soc. B 274, 2317-2326. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.0186)
9. Conradt, L. & Roper, T. J. 2009 Conflicts of interest and the evolution of decision sharing. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 807-819. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0257)
10. Dornhaus, A., Franks, N. R., Hawkins, R. M. & Shere, H. N. S. 2004 Ants move to improve: colonies of Leptothorax albipennis emigrate whenever they find a superior nest site. Anim. Behav. 67, 959-963. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2003.09.004)
11. Doyle, J. R., O'Connor, D. J., Reynolds, G. M. & Bottomley, P. A. 1999 The robustness of the asymmetrically dominated effect: buying frames, phantom alternatives, and in-store purchases. Psychol. Mark. 16, 225-243. (doi:10.1002/(SICI)1520-6793(199905)16:3〈225::AIDMAR3〉3.0. CO;2-X)
12. Ferguson, T. S. 1989 Who solved the secretary problem? Stat. Sci. 4, 282-296. (doi:10.1214/ss/1177012493)
13. Franks, N. R., Mallon, E. B., Bray, H. E., Hamilton, M. J. & Mischler, T. C. 2003 Strategies for choosing between alternatives with different attributes: exemplified by house-hunting ants. Anim. Behav. 65, 215-223. (doi:10.1006/anbe.2002.2032)
14. Franks, N. R., Dornhaus, A., Metherell, B., Nelson, T., Lanfear, S. A. & Symes, W. 2006 Not everything that counts can be counted: ants use multiple metrics for a single nest trait. Proc. R. Soc. B 273, 165-169. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3312)
15. Franks, N. R., Hooper, J. W., Dornhaus, A., Aukett, P. J., Hayward, A. L. & Berghoff, S. M. 2007 Reconnaissance and latent learning in ants. Proc. R. Soc. B 274, 1505-1509. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.0138)
16. Franks, N. R., Hardcastle, K. A., Collins, S., Smith, F. D., Sullivan, K. M. E., Robinson, E. J. H. & Sendova-Franks, A. B. 2008 Can ant colonies choose a far-and-away better nest over an in-the-way poor one? Anim. Behav. 76, 323-334. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.02.009)
17. Freeman, G. H. & Halton, J. H. 1951 Note on exact treatment of contingency, goodness of fit and other problems of significance. Biometrika 38, 141-149.
18. Halloy, J. et al. 2007 Social integration of robots into groups of cockroaches to control self-organized choices. Science 318, 1155-1158. (doi:10.1126/science.1144259)
19. Kerth, G., Ebert, C. & Schmidtke, C. 2006 Group decision making in fission-fusion societies: evidence from two-field experiments in Bechstein's bats. Proc. R. Soc. B 273, 2785-2790. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2006.3647)
20. Kirchner, W. H. 1993 Vibrational signals in the tremble dance of the honeybee, Apis mellifera. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 33, 169-172. (doi:10.1007/BF00216597)
21. Langen, T. A. 1999 How western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) select a nut: effects of the number of options, variation in nut size, and social competition among foragers. Anim. Cogn. 2, 223-233. (doi:10.1007/s100710050043)
22. Lindauer, M. 1955 Schwarmbienen auf Wohnungssuche. Z. Vgl. Physiol. 37, 263-324. (doi:10.1007/BF00303153)
23. Lindauer, M. 1957 Communication in swarm-bees searching for a new home. Nature 179, 63-66. (doi:10.1038/179063a0)
24. Mallon, E. B. & Franks, N. R. 2000 Ants estimate area using Buffon's needle. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 267, 765-770. (doi:10.1098/rspb. 2000.1069)
25. Mallon, E. B., Pratt, S. C. & Franks, N. R. 2001 Individual and collective decision-making during nest site selection by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 50, 352-359. (doi:10.1007/ s002650100377)
26. Marshall, J. A. R., Dornhaus, A., Franks, N. R. & Kovacs, T. 2005 Noise, cost and speed-accuracy trade-offs: decision-making in a decentralized system. J. R. Soc. Interface 3, 243-254. (doi:10.1098/rsif.2005. 0075)
27. Marshall, J. A. R., Bogacz, R., Dornhaus, A., Planqué, R., Kovacs, T. & Franks, N. R. In press. On optimal decision-making in brains and social insect colonies. J. R. Soc. Interface. (doi:10.1098/rsif.2008. 0511)
28. Möglich, M. 1978 Social organization of nest emigration in Leptothorax (Hym. Form.). Insectes Soc. 25, 205-225. (doi:10.1007/BF02224742)
29. Moore, A. J. & Moore, P. J. 1988 Female strategy during mate choice - threshold assessment. Evolution 42, 387-391. (doi:10.2307/ 2409241)
30. Nieh, J. C. 1993 The stop signal of honey bees: reconsidering its message. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 33, 51-56. (doi:10.1007/ BF00164346)
31. Planqué, R., Dornhaus, A., Franks, N. R., Kovacs, T. & Marshall, J. A. R. 2007 Weighted waiting in collective decision-making. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 61, 347-356. (doi:10.1007/s00265-006-0263- 4)
32. Pratt, S. C. 2005 Behavioral mechanisms of collective nestsite choice by the ant Temnothorax curvispinosus. Insectes Soc. 52, 383-392. (doi:10.1007/s00040-005-0823-z)
33. Pratt, S. C. & Sumpter, D. J. T. 2006 A tunable algorithm for collective decision making. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 15 906-15 910. (doi:10.1073/pnas.0604801103)
34. Pratt, S. C., Mallon, E. B., Sumpter, D. J. T. & Franks, N. R. 2002 Quorum sensing, recruitment, and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 52, 117-127. (doi:10.1007/s00265-002-0487-x)
35. Pratt, S. C., Sumpter, D. J. T., Mallon, E. B. & Franks, N. R. 2005 An agent-based model of collective nest site choice by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Anim. Behav. 70, 1023-1036. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2005. 01.022)
36. Real, L. 1990 Search theory and mate choice. I. Models of single-sex discrimination. Am. Nat. 136, 376-405. (doi:10.1086/285103)
37. Regenwetter, M., Grofman, B., Popova, A., Messner, W., Davis-Stober, C. P. & Cavagnaro, D. R. 2009 Behavioural social choice: a status report. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 833-843. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0259)
38. Richardson, T. O., Sleeman, P. A., McNamara, J. M., Houston, A. I. & Franks, N. R. 2007 Teaching with evaluation in ants. Curr. Biol. 17, 1520-1526. (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.08.032)
39. Robinson, E. J. H., Richardson, T. O., Sendova-Franks, A. B., Feinerman, O. & Franks, N. R. 2009 Radio-tagging reveals the roles of corpulence, experience and social information in ant decision making. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 63, 627-636. (doi:10.1007/s00265-008-0696-z)
40. Seeley, T. D. & Buhrman, S. C. 1999 Group decision making in swarms of honey bees. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 45, 19-31. (doi:10.1007/s002650050536)
41. Seeley, T. D. & Visscher, P. K. 2004 Group decision making in nest-site selection by honey bees. Apidologie 35, 101-116. (doi:10.1051/apido:2004004)
42. Seeley, T. D., Mikheyev, A. S. & Pagano, G. J. 2000 Dancing bees tune both duration and rate of waggle-run production in relation to nectar-source profitability. J. Comp. Physiol. A 186, 813-819. (doi:10.1007/s003590000134)
43. Todd, P. M. & Miller, G. F. 1999 From pride and prejudice to persuasion: satisficing in mate search. In Simple heuristics that make us smart (eds G. Gigerenzer & P. M. Todd), pp. 287-308. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
44. Visscher, P. K. & Camazine, S. 1999 Collective decisions and cognition in bees. Nature 397, 400. (doi:10.1038/17047)