Ant social network structure is highly conserved across species

Tomas Kay, Alba Motes-Rodrigo, Arthur Royston, Thomas O. Richardson, Nathalie Stroeymeyt, Laurent Keller

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

Abstract

The ecological success of social insects makes their colony organization fascinating to scientists studying collective systems. In recent years, the combination of automated behavioural tracking and social network analysis has deepened our understanding of many aspects of colony organization. However, because studies have typically worked with single species, we know little about interspecific variation in network structure. Here, we conduct a comparative network analysis across five ant species from five subfamilies, separated by more than 100 Myr of evolution. We find that social network structure is highly conserved across subfamilies. All species studied form modular networks, with two social communities, a similar distribution of individuals between the two communities, and equivalent mapping of task performance onto the communities. Against this backdrop of organizational similarity, queens of the different species occupied qualitatively distinct network positions. The deep conservation of the two community structure implies that the most fundamental behavioural division of labour in social insects is between workers that stay in the nest to rear brood, and those that leave the nest to forage. This division has parallels across the animal kingdom in systems of biparental care and probably represents the most readily evolvable form of behavioural division of labour.
Original languageEnglish
Article number20240898
Number of pages11
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume291
Issue number2027
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Jul 2024

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© 2024 The Authors.

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