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Social Organization and Subcaste Specialization in the Leaf-Cutting Ant Acromyrmex subterraneus (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

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Abstract

Several worker subcastes may occur in ant colonies, including physiological, morphological, and temporal subcastes. Leaf-cutting ants present intricate division of labor among worker subcastes during brood care, fungus garden maintenance, substrate foraging and processing. For colony survival, the fungus garden must be healthy, and tasks efficiently shared among worker subcastes. Therefore, worker behavior is key for colony maintenance in fungus-farming ants. Here we provide a qualitative and quantitative account of intracolonial behavior in Acromyrmex subterraneus, a common leaf-cutter in Brazilian Cerrado savanna. Quantitative ethograms showed that performance of major behavioral categories (e.g., “Brood and Queen Care,” “Foraging,” “Fungus Care”) and the composition of behavioral repertoires are important parameters distinguishing labor among A. subterraneus worker subcastes. Media and major subcastes are behaviorally more similar to one another than to minors. Minors regularly executed brood- and fungus-related tasks, whereas media and majors executed mostly foraging-related tasks. Grooming was frequent in all subcastes. Overall, the behavioral patterns reported in A. subterraneus are similar to those reported for other leaf-cutters. The tasks executed by different subcastes of A. subterraneus closely resemble the division of labor observed in Atta colonies, suggesting that alongside the use of fresh leaves as culturing substrates, a highly conserved set of worker behaviors persist since the origin of the leaf-cutting lineage. Our work highlights the importance of detailed analyses of the composition of behavioral repertoires in polymorphic fungus-farming ants to better understand their social organization, and the mechanisms mediating division of labor among worker subcastes in the Attina.

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  • 20 November 2019

    The original version of this article unfortunately contained some mistakes for the greek letter “Ɵ” in the proof manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Feitosa RM, Lopes JF, Freitas AV, and Christianini AV for discussions and comments on the manuscript. The final version of the manuscript was considerably improved by suggestions from two anonymous reviewers. We thank Feitosa RM for identifying the ants, Tacioli A and Espírito Santo N for assistance in the field, Soares Jr. H. for the photograph of the ants on the fungus garden, and Migliorini G for help with the statistical analyses. The Instituto de Botânica de São Paulo provided logistic support for fieldwork at the cerrado reserve in Mogi-Guaçu. ACC was funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq; 152508/2016-3) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES; Finance Code 001). MUVR was supported by CAPES (Finance Code 001). PSO was supported by research grants from the CNPq (306115/2013-1, 302219/2017-0) and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, BIOTA Program, 2014/23141-1, 2017/16645-1).

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  1. Progama de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, C. P. 6109, Campinas, SP, 13083-862, Brazil

    Ana C. Calheiros & Mariane U. V. Ronque

  2. Departamento de Biologia Animal, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, C. P. 6109, Campinas, SP, 13083-862, Brazil

    Paulo S. Oliveira

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  1. Ana C. Calheiros
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Calheiros, A.C., Ronque, M.U.V. & Oliveira, P.S. Social Organization and Subcaste Specialization in the Leaf-Cutting Ant Acromyrmex subterraneus (Formicidae: Myrmicinae). J Insect Behav 32, 267–280 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-019-09729-6

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