Efficient egress of escaping ants stressed with temperature.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 24312264.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0081082 and PMC identifier 3843683.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
In the present work we investigate the egress times of a group of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) stressed with different heating speeds. We found that the higher the temperature ramp is, the faster ants evacuate showing, in this sense, a group-efficient evacuation strategy. It is important to note that even when the life of ants was in danger, jamming and clogging was not observed near the exit, in accordance with other experiments reported in the literature using citronella as aversive stimuli. Because of this clear difference between ants and humans, we recommend the use of some other animal models for studying competitive egress dynamics as a more accurate approach to understanding competitive egress in human systems.
Medical subject headings
- Ants
- Escape Reaction
- Stress, Physiological
- Temperature