Meeting Abstract
Pheromone trails are chemical signals used by many ant species that allow nestmates to communicate the location of important resources, making them crucial mediators of colony behavior. Workers rely on olfactory antennal sensilla to follow trails and respond to other socially relevant odors, hinting that antennal damage could severely compromise task performance and social integration. However, our previous work suggests that P. dentata ants have the ability to partially compensate for early-life loss of one antenna when performing important odor-mediated tasks, such as trail following, despite lacking the ability to use tropotaxis. Because young workers undergo substantial neuroanatomical and neurochemical maturation soon after enclosion, they may be well suited to recover from early injuries. This study varied the timing of antennal injuries with respect to worker eclosion and the duration of the post-injury recovery period, then tested workers at two ages (15 and 30 days) to assess trail following performance. Workers were filmed following artificial pheromone trails inside a custom 3D printed arena, then image-analysis software was used to quantify worker trajectories and antennal and body movements. Workers that received injuries earlier in life appeared to follow more accurately than same-aged individuals lesioned later. Additionally, injured ants adopted an alternative odor sampling strategy by broadly sweeping their remaining antenna in front of their path, unlike control ants that held their two antennae in a stable orientation. These results shed light on injury-related behavioral plasticity and the ability of workers to compensate for substantial sensory injuries despite their tiny nervous systems, which may enhance social resilience.
