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Personality traits associated with ant colony productivity

Personality traits associated with ant colony productivity

When groups of individuals show variation in a series of behaviours that are related to exploratory activity and parental care, is it related to differences in groups' productivity? This is a key question to understand the process underlying the evolution and maintenance of consistent behavioural differences in a population. Here, researchers investigated whether exploratory, boldness, and brood rescue behaviours expressed at the colony-level are associated with group productivity that is, colony growth, queen and worker production, and larvae survival in the gypsy ant Aphaenogaster senilis. Overall, this experiment reveals that behaviours in group-living species are linked with group productivity. informacion[at]ebd.csic.es: Blight et al (2016) Personality traits are associated with colony productivity in the gypsy ant Aphaenogaster senilis. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 70:2203–2209 DOI 10.1007/s00265-016-2224-x


http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-016-2224-x