Desert Ants Learn to Avoid Pitfall Traps While Foraging

ABSTRACT:

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Animals living in nests leave their nests to search for food and often use constant routes. We tested how workers of ant colonies cope with pitfall traps placed on their way to food. Such pits can represent those dug by the ant-hunting pit-building antlions. The pitfall traps delayed the arrival at the food and increased the workers’ tracks, but the ants improved in searching after accumulating experience. Furthermore, workers learned to avoid falling into the pits with experience. Removing or adding pits led to a fast change in the worker behavior and they ignored the past conditions, except for tracks that were longer than expected, after pitfall traps were removed. The ants fell much more frequently into pits closer to the arena entry, suggesting that such positi

SUBMITTER: Bar A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9219994 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature