ArticlePloS one2017
Social interactions promote adaptive resource defense in ants.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Division of labour in colony defence in a clonal ant.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Consistency and individuality of honeybee stinging behaviour across time and social contexts.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Extracting individual characteristics from population data reveals a negative social effect during honeybee defence.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Learning Distinct Chemical Labels of Nestmates in Ants.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Social insects vigorously defend their nests against con- and heterospecific competitors. Collective defense is also seen at highly profitable food sources. Aggressive responses are elicited or promoted by several means of communication, e.g. alarm pheromones and other chemical markings. In this study, we demonstrate that the social environment and interactions among colony members (nestmates) modulates the propensity to engage in aggressive behavior and therefore plays an important role in allocating workers to a defense task. We kept Formica rufa workers in groups or isolated for different time spans and then tested their aggressiveness in one-on-one encounters with other ants. In groups of more than 20 workers that are freely interacting, individuals are aggressive in one-on-one encounters with non-nestmates, whereas aggressiveness of isolated workers decreases with increasing isolation time. We conclude that ants foraging collectively and interacting frequently, e.g. along foraging trails and at profitable food sources, remain in a social context and thereby maintain high aggressiveness against potential competitors. Our results suggest that the nestmate recognition system can be utilized at remote sites for an adaptive and flexible tuning of the response against competitors.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.