Tracking Whole Colonies Shows Ants Make Career Moves 47
ananyo writes "Researchers have tagged every single worker in entire colonies and used a computer to track them, accumulating what they say is the largest-ever data set on ant interactions. The biologists have found that the workers fall into three social groups that perform different roles: nursing the queen and young; cleaning the colony; and foraging for food. The insects, they found, tend to graduate from one group to another as they age. By creating heat maps to represent the workers’ positions, Mersch's team showed that nurses and foragers stick to their own company and seldom mix, even if the colony’s entrance and brood chamber are close together (abstract). Cleaners are more widely dispersed, patrolling the whole colony and interacting with both of the other groups. 'The ants can probably be in any place within their enclosures in less than a minute,' says Mersch, 'but even in these simple spaces, they organize into these spatial groups.'"
Snippy jokes about H1B ants coming (Score:0, Funny)
3... 2... 1...
Introducing Dice for Ants (Score:5, Funny)
Tired of your dead-end role in the colony? Frustrated that your boss doesn't respect your contribution to the brood? Dice for Ants has over 16 billion job openings for drones just like you. Make the jump today to get the skills to be your own queen. Network with other ambitious insects like yourself. Get advice from others who have made the leap from cleaner to forager.
Fleeing the queen? Makes sense... (Score:5, Funny)
>> workers move between jobs as they get older — nurses are generally younger than cleaners, which are younger than foragers.
So...the workers generally try to further and further away from the queen as they get older? I'll bet there's a Red-Green bit we could reference here.
Yawn (Score:5, Funny)
Wake me up when ants start building Mutalisks...
Re:Distance vs life span (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe they need stronger spacial memory to keep track of who has been feed and who needs feeding. Being a cleaner would seem to require less effort, just pick up trash wherever you see it and dump it in one of the trash dumps. A forager would seem to require even less effort; go out and look for stuff and don't come back until you find something worth taking back, it's a bonus if you come back alive.
Re:I'll bet the ant employers don't whine. . . (Score:3, Funny)