The police are not the army: context-dependent aggressiveness in a clonal ant

Animals often exhibit particular ‘personalities’, i.e. their behaviour is correlated across different situations. Recent studies suggest that this limitation of behavioural plasticity may be adaptive, since continuous adjustment of one's behaviour may be time-consuming and costly. In social ins...

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Published inBiology letters (2005) Vol. 6; no. 3; pp. 329 - 332
Main Authors Barth, M. Benjamin, Kellner, Katrin, Heinze, Jürgen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England The Royal Society 23.06.2010
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Summary:Animals often exhibit particular ‘personalities’, i.e. their behaviour is correlated across different situations. Recent studies suggest that this limitation of behavioural plasticity may be adaptive, since continuous adjustment of one's behaviour may be time-consuming and costly. In social insects, particularly aggressive workers might efficiently take over fighting in the contexts of both nest defence and ‘policing’, i.e. the regulation of kin conflict in the society. Here, we examine whether workers who engage in aggressive policing in the ant Platythyrea punctata play a prominent role also in nest defence against intruders. The participation of individuals in policing and nest defence was highly skewed and a minority of workers exhibited most of the aggression. Workers who attacked reproductives after experimental colony fusion were less active during nest defence and vice versa. This suggests that workers show situation-dependent behavioural plasticity rather than consistently aggressive personalities.
Bibliography:istex:2B83E81C8E4C59288C5E335532329EF637BB1B0B
Present address: Department of Biology, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, 06099 Halle (Saale), Germany.
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ISSN:1744-9561
1744-957X
DOI:10.1098/rsbl.2009.0849