CASCB talk: Collective nest building in leaf-cutting ants by Flavio Roces
Time
Monday, 27. June 2022
11:45 - 12:45
Location
ZT702 and online
Organizer
CASCB
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Flavio Roces, Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology Biocenter, University of Würzburg
This event is part of an event series „CASCB Seminar Series Summer 2022“.
Leaf-cutting ants build the largest and most complex nest among ants, composed of chambers for the maintenance of fungus gardens and the deposition of colony waste, and conspicuous turrets for air exchanges. In my talk, I will present experimental studies that explore the behavioral rules ants use while building, their responses to relevant environmental variables such as CO2, temperature, and relative humidity, and their use of social information, which ultimately lead to the emergence of a functional nest structure. Finally, I will address the question whether ants, besides the expected use of local information, also use remote information during nest building that may account for the observed plasticity in nest design.
Flavio Roces is a Professor at the Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Germany. He is the head of the group “Behavioral Ecology” that investigates decision making and the mechanisms underlying the organization of ant colonies. After earning a PhD in zoology from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), he worked as a postdoc at the University of Erlangen (Germany), and finally moved to the University of Würzburg. His studies are aimed, in a broad sense, to analyze the link between worker behavior and colony function, and combine physiological and behavioral research in the lab with ecological studies in the field.
