Communication

Ants need to be able to communicate for an array of reasons. The following is a list of the 12 major reasons for communication that researchers have identified (Holldobler and Wilson, p. 227).
  1. Alarm
  2. Simple attraction
  3. Recruitment, as to a new food source or nest site
  4. Grooming, including assistance at molting
  5. Trophallaxis (the exchange of oral and anal liquid)
  6. Exchange of solid food particles
  7. Group effect: either facilitating or inhibiting a given activity
  8. Recognition, of both nestmates and members of particular castes, including (broadly) discrimination of injured and dead individuals.
  9. Caste determination, either by inhibition or by stimulation.
  10. Control of competing reproductives
  11. Territorial and home range signals and nest markers
  12. Sexual communication, including species recognition, sex recognition, synchronization of sexual activity, and assessment during sexual competition.

The majority of communication seems to be chemical. Ants also tap each other, feel each other out with their antennae, straddle each other to give certain messages, and grasp and stroke each other as well.

One gland, the pygidial gland on the gastor, is used to lay down trails for the same individual or for others to follow in the same track. It also seems to be used to warn colony members of danger and as a pheromone to attract fellow foragers to food sites. In fire ants, the Dufour's gland is the source of trail- laying chemicals. Some trail pheromones can last several days. In leaf cutter ants, they may create a main trunk trail leading away from the colony only to branch out in several directions a short distance later. They continue to branch out like arteries to capillaries until single ants are foraging for leaf material. When they obtain their leaf fragment, they turn around follow their pheromone trail back along the path to the main trunk and then the colony.


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Science Education Connection
Department of Biochemistry
The University of Arizona
Tuesday, April 29, 1997
warder@u.arizona.edu

http://biology.arizona.edu/sciconn/lessons/shindelman/
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