ArticleAnimal cognition2023
Injury shortens life expectancy in ants and affects some risk-related decisions of workers.
Article in Animal cognition, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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
5 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transcriptional predictors of rescue behaviour in ants.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Do They Know What They Are Doing? Cognitive Aspects of Rescue Behaviour Directed by Workers of the Red Wood AntLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Small workers are more persistent when providing and requiring help in a monomorphic ant.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Feeding ecology and behavioral adaptations shape injury patterns in central European ants.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Life expectancy in ants explains variation in helpfulness regardless of phylogenetic relatedness.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The Formica cinerea ants are known to be highly territorial and aggressively defend their nest and foraging areas against other ants. During the foraging, workers engage in large-scale battles with other colonies of ants and injuries often occur in the process. Such injuries open the body up to pathologies and can lead to costs expressed in lower survival. Here, we addressed the significance of injury in dictating decisions related to engagement in risky behavior in ants (i.e., rescue and aggression). We manipulated the life expectancies of F. cinerea workers by injury and found that the survival of injured workers was shorter compared to the intact individuals. Furthermore, we found that injured workers discriminated between the intact and injured nestmates and showed more rescue behavior toward intact individuals. These rescue actions were expressed as digging around the trapped ant in need of rescue, pulling at its body parts, transporting the sand covering it, and biting the thread entrapping it. In turn, intact and injured workers showed similar and high levels of aggression toward heterospecifics. Our findings highlight the role of behavioral context in the studies devoted to the decision-making processes among social insects and the importance of life expectancy in their behavioral patterns.
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Registered trials
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