Abstract：
Social insects can sense colony size-even without visual information in a dark environment. How they achieve this is yet largely unknown. We empirically tested a hypothesis on the proximate mechanism using ant colonies. In Diacamma colonies, the monogynous queen is known to increase the effort devoted to queen pheromone transmission behaviour (patrolling) as the colony grows, as if she perceives colony size. The negative feedback hypothesis assumes that, through repeated physical contact with workers, the queen monitors the physiological state (fertility) of workers and increases her patrolling effort when she encounters more fertile workers. Supporting this hypothesis, we found that the queen increased her patrolling effort in response to a higher ratio of fertile workers under the experimental condition of constant colony size. Furthermore, chemical analyses and bioassays suggested that cuticular hydrocarbons have queen pheromone activity and can mediate the observed queen-worker communication of fertility state. Such a self-organizing mechanism of sensing colony size may also operate in other social insects living in small colonies.
摘要：
社会性昆虫可以感知殖民地的大小-即使在黑暗环境中没有视觉信息。他们如何做到这一点在很大程度上是未知的。我们使用蚁群对近接机制进行了实证检验。在迪卡玛殖民地，众所周知，随着殖民地的增长，一夫一妻制的女王会加大对女王信息素传播行为（巡逻）的努力，好像她感觉到殖民地的大小。负反馈假设假设，通过与工人的反复身体接触，女王监视工人的生理状态（生育能力），并在遇到更多肥沃的工人时增加巡逻力度。支持这一假设，我们发现，在恒定菌落大小的实验条件下，女王增加了巡逻力度，以应对较高的可育工人比例。此外，化学分析和生物测定表明，表皮碳氢化合物具有女王信息素活性，可以介导观察到的女王与工人之间的生育状态交流。这种感知菌落大小的自组织机制也可以在生活在小菌落中的其他社会性昆虫中运行。
