Task allocation in a cooperative society: specialized castes or age-dependent switching among ant workers

Abstract

Abstract Some ant species have multiple worker castes that differ in body size; workers in one caste remain in the colony and those in the other forage outside the colony (caste polyethism). In other species, all workers engage in both tasks, but the younger workers remain in the colony and the older workers forage (age polyethism). Here, we ask which of these two is the most efficient for colony level performance when foragers suffer a higher daily mortality than workers in the colony and when the optimal worker size differs between two tasks. We studied two models: in the stationary colony model, the colony size and composition remain constant, and the amount of excess resources that can be used for producing reproductive individuals is maximized; in the growing colony model, all of the resources obtained are used for producing new workers, and the rate of the colony growth is maximized. In both models, we observed similar results: caste polyethism is more advantageous than age polyethism if the difference in mortality between the two tasks is small and the difference in the optimal size is large. In the opposite situation, the age polyethism is more advantageous.