Evolutionary biologists have found that ants learn from past experiences and remember attacks from specific nests, leading to increased aggression towards those ants in future encounters.
Evolutionary biologists are investigating how much ants learn from past experiences. After being attacked by ants from a particular nest, ants behave more aggressively towards others from that same nest. A team led by evolutionary biologist Volker Nehring is investigating the extent to which ants learn from past experiences. Ants learn from experience.
This has been demonstrated by a team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Freiburg, led by Dr Volker Nehring, research associate in the Evolutionary Biology and Animal Ecology group, and doctoral student Mélanie Bey. The researchers repeatedly confronted ants with competitors from another nest. The test ants remembered the negative experiences they had during these encounters: when they encountered ants from a nest they had previously experienced as aggressive, they behaved more aggressively towards them than towards ants from nests unknown to them. Ants that encountered members of a nest from which they had previously only encountered passive ants were less aggressive. The biologists published their results in the journal Ants use odours to distinguish between members of their own nest and those from other nests. Each nest has its own specific scent. Previous studies have already shown that ants behave aggressively towards their nearest neighbours in particular. They are especially likely to open their mandibles and bite, or spray acid and kill their competitors. They are less likely to carry out such aggressive manoeuvres against nests that are further away from their own. Until now, it was unclear why this is the case. Nehring's team has now discovered that ants remember the smell of attackers. This is why they are more aggressive when confronted with competitors from nests they are familiar with.The scientists conducted an experiment in two phase
ANTS LEARNING MEMORY AGGRESSION NEUROBIOLOGY
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