Are ants that specialize better at their job?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 09:00
in Biology & Nature
Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote in 1776 that specialized labor provides benefits to human industry, and similar benefits have been suggested to explain the world-wide success of ants, and other social insects which live in colonies. Ants are found on every continent besides Antarctica, and their success has been attributed to the evolution of specialization - it has been theorized that this increases the efficiency of individual workers - but has rarely been measured. However, a new paper by Anna Dornhaus, published in this week's issue of PLoS Biology, shows that individual rock ants (Temnothorax albipennis) specializing on one task are no more efficient than those that perform multiple tasks.