Division of labor is among the main factors to explain the evolutionary success of social systems, from the origins of multicellularity to complex animal societies. The remarkable ecological success of social insects seems to have been largely driven by ergonomic advantages stemming from the behavioral specialization of workers. However, little is known about how individuals and their corresponding behavioral repertoires are related to each other within a division of labor context, particularly by viewing such relationships as complex networks. Applications of network theory to the study of social insects are almost exclusively used to analyze behavioral interactions between individuals, rather than to the study of relations among individuals and behaviors. Here, we use an approach to the study of the organization of the behavioral repertoire of ant colonies that considers both individual-behavior interactions and behavior-behavior interactions, besides colony time budgets. Our study investigates the organization of division of labor in colonies of the trap-jaw ant Odontomachus chelifer (LATREILLE, 1802). All the behavioral acts (including inactivity) performed within three queenright colonies of different sizes (n = 7, 30, and 60 workers) were studied under controlled laboratory conditions. Each ant was individually marked and observed by scan sampling in 10 min intervals for 10 h each (n = 5,919 behavioral acts). We describe the network topologies in terms of centrality, specialization, modularity, and nestedness. This study shows that workers of O. chelifer are organized according to structured networks, composed of individuals exhibiting varying degrees of specialization. The observed centrality scores indicate that some behaviors could have a disproportionately larger impact on the network organization (especially self-grooming). The results underscore the potential of the use of complex networks (particularly measures of modularity and nestedness) in order to discover and study novel organizational patterns of social groups in animal behavior.

中文翻译：

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陷阱颚蚂蚁Odontomachus chelifer中的工人-行为和行为-行为交互网络（Latreille，1802）（膜翅目：昆虫纲）

从多细胞性的起源到复杂的动物社会，分工是解释社会系统进化成功的主要因素之一。社会昆虫在生态学上的巨大成功似乎很大程度上是由于工人行为专业化所产生的人体工程学优势所驱动。但是，人们对劳动分工内的个人及其相应的行为方式如何相互关联知之甚少，特别是通过将这种关系视为复杂的网络。网络理论在社会昆虫研究中的应用几乎专门用于分析个体之间的行为相互作用，而不是用于研究个体之间的关系和行为。这里，我们使用一种方法来研究蚁群的行为表目，除了殖民地时间预算外，它还考虑了个人-行为相互作用和行为-行为相互作用。我们的研究调查了下颚蚂蚁殖民地的分工组织Odontomachus chelifer（拉特里尔，1802年）。在受控大小的实验室条件下，研究了在三个不同大小的皇后区殖民地（n = 7、30和60名工人）中进行的所有行为（包括不活动）。对每只蚂蚁进行单独标记，并以10分钟的间隔进行扫描采样，每次观察10小时（n = 5,919行为）。我们从集中性，专业性，模块化和嵌套性方面描述网络拓扑。这项研究表明，O。chelifer的工人根据结构化的网络进行组织，这些网络由表现出不同专业化程度的个人组成。观察到的中心性得分表明，某些行为可能会对网络组织产生不成比例的更大影响（尤其是自我修饰）。结果强调了使用复杂网络（特别是模块化和嵌套性的度量）以发现和研究动物行为中社会群体的新颖组织模式的潜力。