Communication

Abstract

As well as their physical resources of workers and sexuals, and environmental resources, ants also deal with a less tangible resource—information. Ant societies do not invest so much in information as the modern global human society does, but they do at very least invest a great deal of time in the collection and diffusion of information. Information probably has in fact two main roles. First, the ‘cohesion’ of the society requires that its members should ‘know’ one another, so that the benefits of the society may be confined to its members and so maintained within certain limits of relationship. Only in this way can membership of the society increase individual inclusive fitness. Many signals are therefore concerned with recognizing colony affiliation as an approximation to kinship—there seems to be little evidence that ants can recognize genetic relationship—and with recognizing the queen, and coordinating her reproduction and that of workers. The second role of information is in coordinating the exploitation of environmental resources; in facilitating the discovery, recovery and monopolization of resources, and in the defence of the capital (e.g. brood) and infrastructure (e.g. nests, etc.) in which resources have already been invested.