Ant social network structure is highly conserved

The ecological dominance of social insects makes studying their colony organization fundamentally important to scientists studying collective systems. The recent combination of automated behavioral tracking and social network analysis has deepened our understanding of many aspects of colony social organization. We know how social organization is influenced by group size, genetic heterogeneity, pathogens and symbionts. However, because studies have typically investigated the influence of a given variable on the social network structure of a particular species, we know little about interspecific variation in network structure. Here we conduct a comparative network analysis across five ant species from five sub-families, separated by >100 MY. We find that social network structure is highly conserved. All species form modular networks, with two social communities, a similar distribution of individuals between the communities, and a similar mapping of task performance onto the communities..., For each of 25 colonies (1 queen & 100 workers) we performed 1 week of automated tracking, extracting coordinates and orientations for each tag multiple times per second.
Around each tag we annotated a head region and used overlap of head regions to infer pairwise social interactions.
We quantified each individuals space-use (in particular time distribution between nest and foraging boxes), , # Ant social network structure is highly conserved

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z358r](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z358r)

The data here are collected via automated tracking of 25 ant colonies (5 of each of 5 species). The tracking time-calibrated outputs coordinated and orientations for each individual.

## Description of the data and file structure

'Edgelist' files contain interaction counts for each pair of individuals

'Forage' files count the number of visits each individual paid to each hexagon in the foraging arena

'Nest' files count the number of visits each individual paid to each hexagon in the nest

'Interaction' files contain all pairwise interactions (each interaction is a row). The identities of the involved ants ('id1' and 'id2'), the start and end times of the interaction, the box in which the interaction occured ('space' - 1 = nest box; 2 = foraging box), and the types of contact between the ants that occured (1 = head, 2 = body. So '1-2' implies that the...

社会性昆虫在生态系统中的优势地位，使得对其群体组织的研究对于研究集体系统的科研人员而言具有核心重要性。
近年来，自动化行为追踪技术与社交网络分析方法的结合，加深了我们对群体社会组织多方面的认知。我们已明晰群体规模、遗传异质性、病原体与共生菌如何影响社会组织结构。然而，过往研究通常仅针对单一物种，探讨特定变量对其社交网络结构的影响，因此我们对不同物种间网络结构的种间变异知之甚少。本研究针对隶属于5个亚科的5种蚂蚁开展比较网络分析，这些类群的分化时间已超过1亿年。研究发现，蚂蚁的社交网络结构具有高度的保守性：所有物种均形成模块化网络，且均包含两个社交社群，个体在两个社群间的分布模式相似，任务分配与社群的对应关系也高度一致……

针对25个蚁群（每群含1只蚁后与100只工蚁），我们开展了为期一周的自动化追踪，每秒多次提取每个标识标签对应的个体坐标与朝向信息。我们为每个标识标签标注头部区域，并通过头部区域的重叠情况推断个体间的成对社交互动。我们量化了每只个体的空间利用模式（尤其是其在蚁巢箱与觅食箱之间的时间分配情况）。# 蚂蚁社交网络结构高度保守

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z358r](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z358r)

本数据集源自对25个蚁群的自动化追踪（5个物种各5群），追踪结果经时间校准后输出每只个体的坐标与朝向信息。

## 数据与文件结构说明

'边列表（Edgelist）'文件包含每对个体间的互动次数统计。
'觅食（Forage）'文件统计了每只个体在觅食场域中对每个六边形网格的访问次数。
'蚁巢（Nest）'文件统计了每只个体在蚁巢内对每个六边形网格的访问次数。
'互动（Interaction）'文件包含所有成对互动记录（每条互动占一行），内容包括参与互动的蚂蚁编号（'id1'与'id2'）、互动的起止时间、互动发生的箱体（'space'字段：1代表蚁巢箱，2代表觅食箱），以及蚂蚁间的接触类型（1为头部接触，2为躯体接触，因此'1-2'表示……