In ants, individuals live in tightly integrated units (colonies) and work collectively for its success. In such groups, stable intraspecific variation in behaviour within or across contexts (personality) can occur at two levels: individuals and colonies. This paper examines how colony size and nestmate density influence the collective exploratory behaviour of Formica fusca (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), in the laboratory. The housing conditions of the colonies were manipulated to vary the size of colonies and their densities under a fully factorial design. The results demonstrate the presence of colony behavioural repeatability in this species, and contrary to our expectations, colonies were more explorative on average when they were kept at lower nestmate densities. We also found that experimental colonies created from larger source colonies were more explorative, which conveys that a thorough understanding of the contemporary behaviour of a colony may require knowing its social history and how it was formed. Our results also convey that the colony size and nestmate density can have significant effects on the exploratory behaviour of ant colonies.

中文翻译：

---

菌落大小、巢友密度和社会历史塑造了富米卡菌落的行为变化

在蚂蚁中，个体生活在紧密集成的单位（群体）中，并为成功而共同努力。在这样的群体中，环境内或跨环境（个性）的行为的稳定种内变化可能发生在两个层面：个体和群体。本文在实验室中研究了菌落大小和巢穴密度如何影响 Formica fusca（膜翅目：蚁科）的集体探索行为。在全因子设计下，操纵菌落的居住条件以改变菌落的大小及其密度。结果表明该物种存在群体行为可重复性，与我们的预期相反，群体在保持较低的同窝密度时平均更具探索性。我们还发现，从较大的源菌落创建的实验菌落更具探索性，这表明对菌落当代行为的透彻理解可能需要了解其社会历史及其形成方式。我们的结果还表明，蚁群大小和巢穴密度会对蚁群的探索行为产生显着影响。