Radio frequency identification and tracking of individual ants engaged in colony scale division of labour

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, allowing remote retrieval of identification codes from devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is a small object, requiring no internal power source that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person. These tags contain antennae that respond to prompts from an RFID transceiver by emitting a radio signal that codes for a unique ID. Recent progress in RFID technology has led to the miniaturization of such tags to sub-millimetre dimensions. These microtransponders, once activated by a well localised beam of light, emit a radio frequency identification code. The miniaturization of these tags, as well as their ultra light weight and low price, now permit the use of RFID for insect identification. To make the most of these new possibilities, we will use the RFID system to investigate social insects.The behaviour of ant colonies is extremely complex and includes collective phenomena like nest building, decision making and partitioning of the work force (division of labour). This colony scale activity is not the consequence of some central control but rather emerges from the actions of individual ants as each of them reacts to her immediate environment. The mechanisms in which diverse colony scale behaviours emerge from single ant actions have been extensively studied. We will develop a novel experimental setup incorporating RFID technology that will enable us continuously to track a large number of identified ants as they collaborate. This novel experimental tool will provide simultaneous experimental access at both the colony level and the level of individual ants. This will facilitate new insights and a deeper understanding of the connection between individual and collective behaviour in social insects.We intend to focus on the problem of 'division of labour', namely how an ant colony divides its work force among the different required tasks in response to changing external and internal conditions. The system we propose would allow the tracking, over time, of the ants engaged in different tasks as well as the ants that switch between tasks to maintain colony plasticity. In a second stage of the experiments, we will employ automatic computer controlled doors that would enable us, for example, to prevent specific ants from switching tasks. We will use these novel tools to investigate the role of different individuals and their importance to colony performance. We will focus our study on the importance of phenotypic diversity and ant individuality for division of labour. Would a hypothetical colony of perfectly identical ants perform as well as a colony composed of unique individuals? The role of individuality in division of labour is likely to be of key importance in other social insect phenomena as well as having implications for emerging technologies such as collective robotics and sensor networks.