ArticlePloS one2017
Vertical organization of the division of labor within nests of the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius.
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 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Modular nest structure influences activity cycle synchronisation in ant colonies.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Spatial organization within social ambrosia beetle nests limits spread of infectious disease.iScience · 2025Article
- Nest Entrance Architecture and the Regulation of Foraging Activity in Desert Harvester Ants.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The ontogeny of selection on genetic diversity in harvester ants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Carbon dioxide levels and ventilation inRoyal Society open science · 2021Article
- The effect of nest topology on spatial organization and recruitment in the red ant Myrmica rubra.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2020Article
- Gall-Colonizing Ants and Their Role as Plant Defenders: From 'Bad Job' to 'Useful Service'.Insects · 2019Article
- A spatiotemporal analysis of the food dissemination process and the trophallactic network in the ant Lasius niger.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Article
- Ant-plant sociometry in the Azteca-Cecropia mutualism.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- The non-additive effects of body size on nest architecture in a polymorphic ant.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Learning Distinct Chemical Labels of Nestmates in Ants.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius, foragers occur only in the top 15 cm of the nest, whereas brood and brood-care workers reside mostly in the deepest regions, yet the food and seeds foragers collect must be transported downward 30 to 80 cm to seed chambers and up to 2 m to brood chambers. Using mark-recapture techniques with fluorescent printer's ink, we identified a class of workers that ranges widely within the vertical structure of the nest, rapidly moving materials dropped by foragers in the upper regions downward, and excavated soil from deeper upward. Within the nest, only 5% of foragers were recovered below 20 cm depth, but about 30% of transfer workers and 82% of unmarked workers were found there. Below 70 cm depth, 90% of workers were unmarked, and were probably involved mostly in brood care. During the summer, the transfer workers comprise about a quarter of the nest population, while foragers make up about 40%. Workers marked as transfer workers later appear as foragers, while those marked as foragers die and disappear from the foraging population, suggesting that transfer workers are younger, and age into foraging. The importance of these findings for laboratory studies of division of labor are discussed. The efficient allocation of labor is a key component of superorganismal fitness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.