A research group at Kyoto University analyzes the relationship between individual age and division of labor in termite society, where older soldier ants play a role in fighting natural enemies at the forefront of high mortality risk, and young soldier ants have low mortality risk. He revealed that he plays the role of a king or queen's termite in the center of the nest.

 For insects that live in social life, such as ants and bees, the "age division of labor" is known, in which the content of the work undertaken changes depending on the age of the individual.It has been considered that this is because "the ability to perform work differs depending on the age" and "the opportunity loss is smaller when an individual with a short life expectancy takes a risk".

 In this study, in order to investigate the actual situation of division of labor based on this remaining life, we prepared termite soldiers of different ages and experimentally verified whether the defense behavior and the placement in the nest differ between old soldiers and new recruits.

 As a result, it was found that the old soldiers were more active in the front line and defended than the recruits.On the other hand, when defended only by recruits, the recruits themselves fought the enemy and showed the same level of defense ability as the old soldiers.In other words, the old soldiers fight on the front line not because the new recruits have low defense capabilities.
In addition, experiments in artificial nests revealed that recruits are concentrated near the queen as guards, and old soldiers are mostly distributed outside the royal family.

 From these results, in termite soldiers, although the defense ability is the same between old soldiers and new soldiers, old soldiers come to the front line and fight against natural enemies, and new soldiers play a role as a guard in the royal family, which rarely fights directly with natural enemies. I found out that I was in charge.

 The results of this research show the actual state of the advanced age division of labor system of the insect society, which minimizes the opportunity loss of the nest as a whole and efficiently maintains the defense force by taking on the work with high risk of death for the short-lived individual. ..

Paper information:[Biology Letters] Age-based soldier polyethism: old termite soldiers take more risks than young soldiers

Kyoto University

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