Nutritional needs and mortality risk combine to shape foraging decisions in ants  

作　　者：Bryce Barbee Noa Pinter-Wollman 

机构地区：[1]Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,University of California,Los Angeles,CA,USA

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2023年第6期747-755,共9页动物学报（英文版）

摘　　要：When foraging,internal needs for particular nutrients might affect food choice,and external constraints,such as predation risk,might impact trade-offs between foraging and risk avoidance.Examining both internal and external constraints simultaneously can provide important insights into how animals make decisions.We examined how internal nutritional needs and external cues of mortality risk jointly impact the foraging behavior of ants.Ant colonies require carbohydrates to support workers energetically and proteins to raise brood.Furthermore,colonies adjust their foraging activity in response to the environment,such as food availability and the presence of predators or heterospecifics.Here we exam-ine the foraging decisions of groups of Argentine ants Linepithema humile,which differ in their nutritional needs in high-risk environments.We starved groups of ants for either proteins or carbohydrates and determined the foraging choices that ants made when cues of heterospecifics were present.We found that ants preferentially forage for carbohydrates in high-risk conditions.Furthermore,starvation for carbohydrates increased the ants'preference for carbohydrates,even when cues of heterospecifics were present at both carbohydrates and protein resources.Starvation for protein also resulted in preferential foraging for carbohydrates,but it increased visitation to a protein food source in high-risk envi-ronments compared to when ants were starved for carbohydrates or for both resources.Examining the effect of both nutrition and mortality risk on foraging simultaneously provides insights about state-dependent risk-taking behavior that may have important implications for predicting theinvasionofspecies intonovelhabitats.

关 键 词：DECISION-MAKING FORAGING NUTRITION risk trade-offs 

分 类 号：Q95[生物学—动物学]