Researchers say these insects have an impressive hierarchy of jobs

Apr 20, 2013 19:51 GMT  ·  By

After spending six years studying carpenter ants and their behavior, a team of Swiss researchers came to understand that these insects have an impressive hierarchy of jobs, and that each and every one of them follows a precise career path.

Previous such studies only document this so-called practice of climbing the corporate ladder in bees. Still, as this new research shows, other insects also display highly complex social behaviors.

The ants kept a close eye on by these researchers fell into three separate groups, which were formed according to their age.

As Daily Mail reports, the younger ones were in charge of nursing the queen. The working agenda of the ones which were a tad older revolved around keeping the colony clean.

The third group was made up by slightly older ants, whose job was to go looking for food outside the colony, the researchers explain.

By the looks of it, the ants only socialized within these three careers groups, meaning that their interactions were restricted to others of their kind.

“We found that around a third of the workers were nurses, which almost always stayed with the queen and eggs. Another third were cleaners and the rest were foragers, collecting food outside the colony,” professor Laurent Kent summed up the findings of this 6-year-long research into the social and working behavior of ants.

“We also found that the ants interacted mostly with workers from the same group. They don’t try to interact with workers from another group,” the professor further explained.

This study proves that, much like bees, ants change their behavior as they age.

Despite the ants' having this complex and well pieced together hierarchy of jobs, some of the insects did go rogue every once in a while, meaning that they took up jobs which were not suitable for their age.

Thus, the University of Lausanne in Switzerland researchers managed to pin down old nurses or young foragers.