Ants as a model for economic decision-making: consumer psychology in a biological system
General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
Economic Theory
Final Report Abstract
I consider the Emmy Noether Project “Ant Economics” to have been very successful. It has resulted in 30 publications, as well as an additional four manuscripts submitted or in preparation. Much of the work conducted was published in well-respected journals and has been covered by national and international media outlets (The Economist, Suddeutsche Zeitung, LA Times, Le Mond, ZDF, etc). Insights from this project have given us a firm understanding of value perception in insects, and offer a firm basis for further research. My lab and I will continue building on the insights gained during this period over the next five years at least, under an ERC-funded research programme. Over the last five years, we have demonstrated that concepts developed in the field of behavioural economics and consumer psychology are highly relevant to understanding insect behaviour. An important milestone was the demonstration of relative value perception in ants. The presence of relative value perception opens the door to value distortion via cognitive manipulations, which we have also demonstrated in insects. For example, ants overvalue rewards they worked harder for and undervalue food with unexpected value-neutral aspects. Ants also undervalue food which is already being exploited by conspecifics, but do not over-value food which has been heavily advertised. In addition to our work on behavioural economics, we have made significant advances in our understanding of insect learning, cognition, and strategic information use. Lasius niger ants are prodigiously good learners, capable of robustly learning multiple associations given very little training. They show very rapid learning flexibility, and are able to rapidly learn to ignore pheromone trails when they are uninformative. However, in this regard they are also limited: we found a rarelydescribed hard limit to flexibility: while ants can learn to ignore pheromone trails, they cannot learn to avoid them. However, they are nonetheless capable of improving their reward intake rate by deploying simple heuristics. In the above case, the ants learn to pick a favoured side, try that first, and if it is wrong quickly correct their behaviour. We showed that ants cannot learn the concept of “the same” or “different”, but again, ants can develop their own personal heuristic to address the challenge. Ants show surprisingly high self-control abilities, and can forego immediate low rewards in order to collect a higher reward later on. Indeed, ants use their knowledge of available rewards to deploy appropriate information use strategies: While ants which know where a food source is normally ignore the pheromone trails of their sisters, if they have other information that their sisters might have found a better food source (for example by meeting a nestmate returning from such food), they change their strategy and begin following pheromone trails. In addition to our main research projects, we have been fortunate to be able to explore other questions: we have shown that spiders are adapting to urban environments by losing their aversion to light, we have examined the defecation behaviour of ants and how it correlates with the presence of queens or the reproductive status of workers, and we have shown that Lasius niger ants do not seem to have specialist pheromone followers, to name just a few. In summary, the Ant Economics project has resulted in a substantial increase in our understanding of insect learning, cognition, and decision-making. It has supported the professional development of academics from school students to group leaders. Finally, it has acted as a solid base from which to expand an ambitious avenue of research, and develop the field of Ecological Behavioural Economics.
Publications
- (2020). Ants resort to heuristics when facing relational-learning tasks they cannot solve. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1932), 20201262
Oberhauser, F. B., Koch, A., De Agrò, M., Rex, K., & Czaczkes, T. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1262) - (2020). Labeling effect in insects: Cue associations influence perceived food value in ants (Lasius niger). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 134(3), 280–292
Wendt, S., & Czaczkes, T. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/com0000212) - (2020). Negative feedback: Ants choose unoccupied over occupied food sources and lay more pheromone to them. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 17 (163) 20190661
Wendt, S., Kleinhölting, N., & Czaczkes, T. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2019.0661) - (2020). No specialist pheromone-ignoring ants in Lasius niger. Ecological Entomology
Koch, A., & Czaczkes, T. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/een.12995) - (2020). Trail pheromone does not modulate subjective reward evaluation in Lasius niger ants. Frontiers in Psychology, 11
Oberhauser, Felix B., Wendt, S., & Czaczkes, T. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.555576) - (2020). Very rapid multi-odour discrimination learning in the ant Lasius niger. Insectes Sociaux, 67(4), 541–545
Czaczkes, T. J., & Kumar, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-020-00787-0)
