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Ants Adapt Tool Use to Avoid Drowning
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Ants adapt tool use to avoid drowning [phys.org]:
October 8, 2020
Ants adapt tool use to avoid drowning
Researchers have observed black imported fire ants using sand to draw liquid food out of containers, when faced with the risk of drowning. This is the first time this sophisticated tool use has been reported in animals. These findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology.
A laboratory experiment has shown for the first time that a species of ant has the remarkable ability to adapt its tool use. When provided with small containers of sugar water, black imported fire ants were able to float and feed on the surface, but when researchers reduced the surface tension, the ants started depositing sand grains on the inside of the container leading out of it.
"We found the ants used sand to build a structure that could effectively draw sugar water out of the container to then to be collected" said Dr. Aiming Zhou, an associate professor at Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, and a lead author of the research. "This exceptional tool making skill not only reduced the drowning risk of ants, but also provided a larger space for them to collect sugar water."
The sand structures were found to be so efficient that they could syphon almost half of the sugar water out of the containers in five minutes.
Researchers altered the surface tension of the sugar water by adding surfactant. When surfactant concentrations were over 0.05%, representing considerable drowning risk, ants were observed building the sand structures to syphon sugar water out of the container. These structures were never observed when ants foraged in containers of pure sugar water, indicating an adaptable approach to this novel tool use.
Journal Reference:
Aiming Zhou, Yuzhe Du, Jian Chen. Ants adjust their tool use strategy in response to foraging risk, Functional Ecology (DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13671 [doi.org])
