Synchronised brood transport by ants occurs without communication

Abstract

Collective behaviours in societies such as those formed by ants are thought to be the result of distributed mechanisms of information processing and direct decision-making by well-informed individuals, but their relative importance remains unclear. Here we tracked all ants and brood movements to investigate the decision strategy underlying brood transport in nests of the ant Camponotus fellah. Changes in environmental conditions induced workers to quickly transport the brood to a preferred location. Only a minority of the workers, mainly nurses, participated in this task. Using a large number of statistical tests we could further show that these transporters omitted to recruit help, and relied only on private information rather than information obtained from other workers. This reveals that synchronised group behaviour, often suggestive of coordinated actions among workers, can also occur in the complete absence of communication.