The multi-dimensional nature of information drives prioritisation of private over social information in ants

When personally gathered and socially acquired information conflict, animals often prioritise private information. We propose that this is because private information often contains details that social information lacks. We test this idea in an ant model. Ants using a food source learn its location and quality rapidly (private information), whereas pheromone trails (social information) provide good directional information, but lack reliable information about food quality. If this lack is indeed responsible for the choice of memory over pheromone trails, adding information that better food is available should cause foragers to switch their priority to social information. We show it does: while ants follow memory rather than pheromones when they conflict, adding unambiguous information about a better potential food source (a 2µl droplet of good food) reverses this pattern, from 60% of ants following their memory to 75% following the pheromone trail. Using fluorescence microscopy, we demon...当个体采集的私人信息（private information）与社会习得信息（socially acquired information）发生冲突时，动物往往会优先选择私人信息。我们提出，这一现象的根源在于私人信息通常包含社会信息所缺失的细节。我们以蚂蚁为模型对该假说开展验证。取食食物源的蚂蚁能够快速习得该食物的位置与品质信息，即私人信息，而信息素路径（pheromone trails）仅能提供可靠的方向指引，却缺乏关于食物品质的有效信息。若这种信息缺失确实是蚂蚁优先选择记忆而非信息素路径的原因，那么向觅食者（foragers）提供存在更优质食物的信息，应当会使其将决策优先级转向社会信息。我们的实验证实了这一假说：当蚂蚁的记忆与信息素路径产生冲突时，它们原本会优先遵循自身记忆；但在添加关于潜在更优质食物的明确信息，即2微升优质食物液滴后，这一选择模式发生逆转——原本60%选择遵循记忆的蚂蚁，变为75%选择跟随信息素路径。我们利用荧光显微镜技术（fluorescence microscopy），证实了……