Ants who receive a caffeine-laced sugary reward become more efficient at navigating back to the reward's location compared to ants that only receive sugar. Caffeinated ants move toward the reward via a more direct path but do not increase their speed, suggesting that caffeine improved their ability to learn.
Argentine ants are one of the most ecologically harLmful and costly invasive species worldwide. Control efforts, which focus on using poisonous baits, have proven ineffective, likely due to low bait uptake and bait abandonment. The researchers wanted to test whether using caffeine, which has been shown to improve learning in honeybees and bumblebees, might improve the ants' ability to learn the bait location and guide their nestmates back there.
"The lowest dose we used is what you find in natural plants, the intermediate dose is similar to what you would find in some energy drinks, and the highest amount is set to be the LD50 of bees -- where half the bees fed this dose die -- so it's likely to be quite toxic for them," says Galante. The researchers showed that caffeine lowered the ants' foraging times by making them more efficient, not by making them speedier. There was no effect of caffeine on the ants' pace at any dosage, but ants that received low to intermediate doses of caffeine trips traveled by less tortuous paths.
The researchers are optimistic that caffeine could help efforts to control Argentine ants, but further research is needed first. They're currently testing caffeine-laced baits in a more naturalistic field setting in Spain and also plan to investigate whether there is any interaction between caffeine and the bait poison.
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Fonte: physorg_com - 🏆 388. / 55 Consulte Mais informação »