house, it will be noticed that some ants, apparently quite indis-
tinguishable from the others, are much more efficient when it
comes to transporting the pupae. This is why two entomologists,
Simon Robson and James Traniello, have put forward the theory
of ‘key individuals’ whose role within the colony is to stimulate
the zeal of the other workers, at which they are so successful that
they can even make inactive ones start working. Robson and
Traniello report that when a Formica schaufussi forager worker
acting as a ‘scout’ locates a prey too large to be retrieved
individually, it organizes cooperative prey transport by recruiting
nestmates. During this process, the scout plays a key role in
maintaining the cohesion of the retrieval group. Indeed, when
the scout is experimentally removed, the recruited workers com-
posing the retrieval group typically abandon the prey and co-
operative foraging is terminated.
What is it that makes some individuals in a colony become
model workers, forming what the French biologist Marguerite
Combes, who discovered this phenomenon in 1937, called ‘the
workers’ elite’? Is it caused by genetic factors, individual experi-
ence, the social context, or by mere chance? For the time being,
we cannot answer these questions.
Two things, however, are certain: the sharing of tasks is uni-
versal among ants; and this phenomenon, which can be observed
even in the archaic species, appeared very early in their history.
Even in colonies of the dinosaur ant Nothomyrmecia macrops, there
are several individuals whose special job it is to stand guard at the
entrance to the nest. This is admittedly a very rudimentary mode
of allocating work; but it represents the inception of a process that
evolution was to transform into the much more elaborate div-
ision of labour of more derived ants. These intricate work-sharing
systems, seldom matched by any other living creatures, are un-
doubtedly one of the main keys to the remarkable ecological
success of ants. It must be said, too, that ant societies possess
particularly sophisticated systems of communication.
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FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS