Social isolation of mature workers affects nestmate recognition in the ant Camponotus fellah

This study investigates the role of social stimulation on nestmate recognition in mature workers of Camponotus fellah. We isolated 4-week-old workers before examining their behaviour in dyadic reunion tests. At the age of 4 weeks, workers are normally intolerant towards both allospecific and homospecific but allocolonial individuals. However, when they were isolated for up to 20 days, allocolonial aggressions decreased while allospecific aggression remained constant. Workers isolated for 20 days also engaged in allocolonial trophallaxis. These results suggest that workers need to be reinforced by social stimulation during their adult life to keep precise nestmate recognition capacities. We discuss our data under the perspective of recent neuroethological data in social insects to propose a mechanism for the formation of the neural template used in the nestmate recognition process. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.