Learning on the Job: Efficiency of tandem leaders navigating a labyrinth during relocation in Diacamma indicum

Khan, Paromita (2025) Learning on the Job: Efficiency of tandem leaders navigating a labyrinth during relocation in Diacamma indicum. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

Text (MS Dissertation of Paromita Khan (20MS139)) 20MS139_Thesis_file.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (2MB)

Abstract

Ants are among the most behaviorally diverse of social insects, with navigation forming a crucial aspect. Their ability to explore, learn and adapt routes to food sources and new nest location has been of interest in behavioral ecology and cognition studies. A lot of experiments have been carried out to understand these behaviors, which most commonly included the context of foraging and maze set up involving combination of straight paths. Ants use a number of techniques to navigate through their surrounding environment like path integration, landmark based navigation, visual cues, chemical cues, sun compass orientation as well as geomagnetic cues. The aim of this study is to understand the learning ability of individual ant and problem-solving ability of a colony. The navigational problem provided was a labyrinth path, which have no visual cues like landmark, symmetrical circular paths with no geomagnetic cues to challenge ants’ navigational ability at an extreme level under relocation pressure. Present study was done on Diacamma indicum, commonly found black ant. The relocation data, that is discovery time, Latency and transportation time is collected for understanding whether ants can solve the labyrinth and reach their new nest. If yes, the degree of difficulty faced by ants to solve the labyrinth, and the change in relocation dynamics this difficult path demands. Also, data collected on path covered, time taken to finish a tandem run and number of U turns across multiple consecutive uninterrupted tandem runs of leaders to understand the learning and increase of efficiency of the leaders at individual level. Analysis revealed ants’ capability to solve this difficult path but there are some seasonal differences on the success rate of colonies to relocate was noticed. Compared to the relocation dynamics on straight path, ants took considerably more time to solve the labyrinth and relocate, though the dynamics regarding the leader population is different for the two cases. Even though the total work done by the leaders over time is similar to control, but due to discrepancies in leader population, the colony compensates, by MaxTL works significantly more in labyrinth path. Ants are also seen to have increased navigational efficiency as they get more experienced of the labyrinth path which was reflected on decreased time taken, lesser number of U turns taken and also increase of speed during the last tandem run. This study is important to understand how despite of having discrepancies in the percentage of specific types of leaders, ants as a colony over all compensates as the work done across time remains comparable to control. This is a very interesting finding and requires more understanding and investigation.

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