Ecology and Ethology Laboratory, Department of Zoology, University of Calcutta, 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata-700019, India
Online published on 20 July, 2015.
Ants collect food either individually or jointly or in a sequential order through a trail tract. It is not clear under what circumstances the ants decide to carry food by developing a tract between the food source and the nest. To verify the same different types of food in different quantity were offered to the ants in their foraging ground in Garia, Kolkata, India. It is revealed that the ants Pheidole roberti, Paratrechina longicornis, Monomorium pharaonis did not consider it wise to develop a trail tract to collect the food from the source where offered foods viz. sugar cubes, dry fish fragments, biscuit fragments, nut particles and papad fragments were less than 70 in number without few exceptions. The ants though carried the food particles in different spells in respect to their chance of contact with the supplied food, in cases of deposition of 30–40 food particles at the offered site, occurrence of 120 food particles belonging to four varieties in equal number induced the ants to develop the trail tract to carry the food to the nest.
Ants, Foraging, Cue, Trail, Food collection
