Trail following Learning by Young Myrmica rubra Workers (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)

Table 1

Trail following of foragers, naïve young ants, the two kinds of ants set together, young ants again, alone, after 20, 2, or 24 hours, and queens. Thirty foragers and 30 young ants from nest I, 20 foragers and 20 young ants from nest II, and 3 queens were used. The ants were tested on circumferences (𝑅=5 cm) either blank (pure hexane) or imbibed with 1 poison gland extract, this containing the trail pheromone. Each time, 40 values of trail following behavior were recorded, an individual having thus the possibility of making several trajectories on the trail. The obtained distributions of the 40 values were characterized by their median and quartiles and compared to one another using the nonparametric 𝜒² test [22]. Experimental details are given in the “Material and Methods” section and statistical results in the “Results” section.

Numbers of walked arcs	Foragers				Naïve young ants
	Hexane		1 gland/trail		Hexane		1 gland/trail
	Nest I	Nest II	Nest I	Nest II	Nest I	Nest II	Nest I	Nest II
0	1	2	0	0	5	3	1	8
1	27	25	1	0	29	32	22	14
2-3	11	12	0	3	6	5	13	14
4-5	0	1	1	2			3	3
6–8	1		5	5			0	1
9–12			5	8			1
13–20			17	15
21–30			6	6
31–50			4	1
>50			1
Median	1.0	1.0	16.0	14.5	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0
Quartiles	1-2	1-2	10.8–23.5	8.8–18.5	1-1	1-1	1-2	1-2
	Marked foragers + young ants				Young alone again			Queens
	Foragers		Young ants		After
	Nest I	Nest II	Nest I	Nest II	20 h (I)	2 h (II)	24 h (II)
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1	0	0	3	3	3	5	0	2
2-3	0	0	7	4	3	8	3	10
4-5	1	0	9	10	2	3	8	7
6–8	2	3	11	5	11	7	3	8
9–12	8	9	6	9	7	6	7	7
13–20	14	23	4	9	10	4	9	1
21–30	12	5			5	4	6	1
31–50	2					2	4	1
>50						1		3
Median	16.0	17.0	6.5	8.0	10.0	7.5	12.0	6.0
Quartiles	12–23	12–20	4–9.3	4–11.3	6–18	3–17	5–20.3	3–10