Biological rhythms and task allocation in ant colonies

Abstract

Task allocation in ant colonies, mediated by social interactions, regulates which individuals perform which task and when they are active, in response to the current situation. Many tasks are performed in a daily temporal pattern. An ant's biological clock depends on the patterns of gene expression that are regulated using a negative feedback loop which is synchronized to the earth's rotation by external cues. An individual's biological clock can shift in response to social cues, and this plasticity contributes to task switching. Daily rhythms in individual ant behavior combine via interactions within and across task groups to adjust the collective behavior of colonies. Further work is needed to elucidate how the social cues, which lead to task switching, influence the molecular mechanisms that generate clock outputs associated with each task and to investigate the evolution of temporal patterns in task allocation in relation to ecological factors.