On February 2016, 2, Associate Professor Eisuke Hasegawa of Hokkaido University and others wrote a paper summarizing the results of a survey that colonies (groups) would not last long without ants that do not always work. It is essential for the survival of the university. ”
A worker who hardly works, with 2 to 3% always present in the colonies of social insects *. "Why are there workers who do not work in nature who need to improve short-term efficiency?" Has been a big mystery until now.
In the research, we compared the system that "when a worker who normally works gets tired, the worker who does not work works instead" and the system that "everyone works all at once" and which one lasts longer in the presence of fatigue. , When the ants working in the actual colony are resting, I investigated whether the ants that do not normally work work.As a result, in the absence of fatigue, there was no difference in the duration of the two systems, but in the presence of fatigue, the system with non-working workers lasted longer.This means that when a normally working worker gets tired and can't work, a non-working worker who isn't tired can take the place of work, avoiding the critical moment of a colony that can be fatally damaged if someone isn't working all the time. Was shown.Even in actual colonies, ants that do not normally work are shown to work when working ants are resting, and an inefficient system that dares to make non-working workers resident is lacking in the long-term survival of the colony. It turned out to be impossible.
According to this research, not only social insects but also human tissues, if the short-term efficiency of the tissue is sought too much, it may be seriously damaged. The importance of thinking was shown.
* Social insects are insects that form a group like bees and termites and have a social structure with a hierarchy of queen ants and worker ants.
