Take a typical colony of 10,000 or more true harvester ants (Veromessor andrei). They live in an underground nest of flattened chambers connected by skinny tunnels. In a new study of these complicated arrays, having more tunnel connections is what matters for worker collective performance, not more space or nest volume, says Noa Pinter-Wollman of the University of California, San Diego.
The more satellite chambers that are connected to the main entrance chamber, the faster the worker ants converge on a food find, Pinter-Wollman reports October 21 in Biology Letters. And the more alternate routes that ants can take between pairs of chambers, the faster the foragers arrive at food. She didn’t see the same speed-up as the volume of the chambers increased, despite the potential to hold more ants.
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