Meeting Abstract
Eusocial insects and other colonial organizations are considered to be some of the most effective and intricate social establishments in the natural world. In particular, insect colonies are thought to employ efficient and dynamic task allocation mechanisms matching workers to tasks needing work. Worker age is typically related to the tasks they perform where younger workers tend to perform safe tasks (e.g. nursing) closer to the center of the nest where they first emerge into adults and transition to outward and riskier tasks (e.g. foraging) over the course of their lives; this idea of temporal polyethism has been demonstrated in honey bees and is thought to apply in some degree to most social insect species. Here we examine temporal polyethism in two ant species with very different life histories – the long lived and slow paced Temnothorax rugutalusand the fast paced with a short worker lifespan Monomorium pharaonis by tracking the behavior of workers through their aging process. Our data will show how age relates to individual inactivity (known to vary consistently among individuals) as well as the type of task performed in each life stage. Both study species have shown evidence of high inactivity levels in younger workers, however the inactivity-age relationship in T. rugutalus is more complex than that of the M. pharaonis. This may be because of the long lifespan of T. rugutalus where older workers may senesce versus short-lived workers who may die before their physiologies degrade. Studying the role of age in task allocation among widely different species, as well as the relationship between inactivity and age, offers insight into the stability and adaptive task allocation in dynamic environments.
