B. Schatz et al., SPATIAL FIDELITY AND INDIVIDUAL FORAGING SPECIALIZATIONS IN THE NEOTROPICAL PONERINE ANT, ECTATOMMA-RUIDUM ROGER (HYMENOPTERA, FORMICIDAE), Sociobiology, 26(3), 1995, pp. 269-282
In the Neotropical ponerine ant Ectatomma ruidum, workers involved in
outside activities specialize into five behavioral categories which ma
y be defined both on the basis of their fidelity to a given foraging s
ite and according to their individual specialization in choice of food
items or to the behavioral tasks they performed. We distinguished: on
one hand hunters, honey-collecting workers and unspecialized intermed
iates between these two groups, and on the other hand nest-maintenance
workers and patrollers clustered as ''non-foragers''. Moreover, among
both hunters and honey-collectors, two different subsets of individua
ls can be segregated according to their rate of activity: ''specialist
s'' and ''elite-specialists''. Elitism (sensu Oster and Wilson 1978) a
nd behavioral specialization are two different phenomena which can be
invoked to explain the performances of an individual. In laboratory co
nditions, and apart from their specialization in choice of food items,
honey-collecting workers show a high spatial fidelity and use visual
cues (a cross, a circle or a triangle) to locate the site on which the
y specialize. The adaptive value of the cognitive capacities linked to
spatial fidelity are discussed according to the natural variability i
n local availability of certain food type.