A comparative approach to cooperative transport in ants: individual persistence correlates with group coordination

When groups of ants work together to carry large objects—called cooperative transport—they must form consensus on a travel direction. In many species, groups are unsuccessful at this decision, and deadlock. In other collective decisions, including nest-site selection in honeybees, individuals’ enthusiasm or recruitment intensity for a given option affects the selection process. A similar mechanism may be important during cooperative transport in ants and may account for coordination differences among species. Results from theoretical models suggest that individuals’ persistence—their reluctance to give up or change their preferred direction—may promote coordination. More persistent individuals formed more successful groups in a theoretical context. As an empirical test of this hypothesis, I examined cooperative transport in four ant species that differ substantially in their group-level coordination, from exceedingly coordinated to rarely successful. I focused on the beginning of transp...