Ant colonies maintain social homeostasis in the face of decreased density

Interactions lie at the heart of social organization, particularly in ant societies. Interaction rates are presumed to increase with density, but there is little empirical evidence for this. We manipulated density within carpenter ant colonies of the species Camponotus pennsylvanicus by quadrupling nest space and by manually tracking 6.9 million ant locations and over 3200 interactions to study the relationship between density, spatial organization and interaction rates. Colonies divided into distinct spatial regions on the basis of their underlying spatial organization and changed their movement patterns accordingly. Despite a reduction in both overall and local density, we did not find the expected concomitant reduction in interaction rates across all colonies. Instead, we found divergent effects across colonies. Our results highlight the remarkable organizational resilience of ant colonies to changes in density, which allows them to sustain two key basic colony life functions, that i...互动是社会组织的核心所在，在蚁群社会中这一点体现得尤为鲜明。学界普遍认为互动频率会随种群密度升高而增加，但相关实证证据却十分匮乏。本研究以宾夕法尼亚木工蚁（Camponotus pennsylvanicus）的蚁群为研究对象，通过将巢箱空间扩大至四倍来操控种群密度，并手动追踪了690万个蚂蚁位置数据与3200余次互动事件，以此探究种群密度、空间组织结构与互动频率三者间的关联。研究发现，蚁群会基于其内在的空间组织结构划分出不同的功能区域，并相应调整自身的移动模式。尽管整体密度与局部密度均出现下降，但我们并未在所有蚁群中观察到预期的互动频率同步降低现象。相反，不同蚁群展现出了分化的响应结果。本研究结果凸显了蚁群对密度变化的卓越组织韧性，这种韧性使其能够维持两项核心的基础种群生存功能，即……