Bimodal alarm signals modulate responses to monomodal alarm signals in <i>Camponotus modoc</i> carpenter ants
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Distressed western carpenter ants, Camponotus modoc, produce alarm pheromone and substrate-borne vibrations. The alarm pheromone attracts nestmates but the effects of vibratory signals, or of bimodal pheromonal and vibratory signals, are not known. Worker ants of two Camponotus congeners reportedly stand still ("freeze") or run fast in response to engineered drumming vibrations inputted on plastic, but many responses to ant-produced vibratory signals on wood have not yet been investigated. Generally, orientating toward signalers under vertebrate predator attack seems maladaptive and not beneficial to ant colonies. We tested the hypotheses (1) that vibratory alarm signals cause freezing, rapid running but not attraction of nestmates, and (2) that bimodal alarm signals modulate responses to monomodal alarm signals, thereby possibly reducing predation risk. Laser Doppler vibrometry recordings revealed that the ants' vibratory signals readily propagate through ant nest lamellae, and thus quickly inform nest mates of perceived threats. With a speaker modified to record and deliver vibratory signals, we obtained drumming signals of distressed ants on a Douglas fir veneer, and bioassayed signal effects on ants in an arena with a suspended veneer floor. In response playback of vibratory signals, ants ran rapidly, or froze, but did not approach the vibratory signals. Exposed to alarm pheromone, ants frequently visited the pheromone source. However, concurrently exposed to both alarm pheromone and vibratory signals, ants visited the pheromone source less often but spent more time "frozen." The ants' modulated responses to bimodal signals seem adaptive but the reproductive fitness benefits are still to be quantified.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".