Evolution of self-organised division of labour driven by stigmergy in leaf-cutter ants
Di Pietro, Viviana (KU Leuven. Department of Biology)
Govoni, Patrick (KU Leuven. Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine)
Chan, Kin Ho (Laboratory of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Genomics)
Caliari Oliveira, Ricardo (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)
Wenseleers, Tom (KU Leuven. Department of Biology)
van den Berg, Pieter (KU Leuven. Evolutionary Modelling Group)

Date:	2022
Abstract:	Social insects owe their widespread success to their ability to efficiently coordinate behaviour to carry out complex tasks. Several leaf-cutter ant species employ an advanced type of division of labour known as task partitioning, where the task of retrieving leaves is distributed between workers that cut and drop and those that collect the fallen leaves. It is not entirely clear how such highly coordinated behaviour can evolve, as it would seem to require the simultaneous mutations of multiple traits during the same generation. Here, we use an agent-based simulation model to show how task partitioning in leaf-cutter ants can gradually evolve by exploiting stigmergy (indirect coordination through the environment) through gravity (leaves falling from the treetop on the ground forming a cache). Our simple model allows independent variation in two core behavioural dimensions: the tendency to drop leaves and the tendency to pick up dropped leaves. Task partitioning readily evolves even under these minimal assumptions through adaptation to an arboreal environment where traveling up and down the tree is costly. Additionally, we analyse ant movement dynamics to demonstrate how the ants achieve efficient task allocation through task switching and negative feedback control.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Evolution ; Behavioural ecology ; Ecological modelling
Published in:	Scientific reports, Vol. 12 (December 2022) , art. 21971, ISSN 2045-2322

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-26324-6
PMID: 36539468

9 p, 4.5 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles