Thrifty phenotypes in ants: Extending a human developmental hypothesis to a superorganism
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A bstract Adaptation to extreme environments is commonly assumed to occur through microevolutionary change. However, studies of high-altitude human populations show that organisms can also respond to nutritional stress through developmental plasticity, producing thrifty phenotypes that prioritize essential function over costly structures. Whether this adaptive strategy extends beyond humans, and how it operates in natural systems, remains largely unexplored. Here, we test the thrifty phenotype hypothesis (TPH) in a widely distributed superorganism, the carpenter ant Camponotus herculeanus , which inhabits some of the most environmentally challenging regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Colonies comprise inexpensive minor workers and energetically costly major workers, providing a powerful system for examining plastic investment under resource limitation. We quantified relationships between caste structure and climate and conducted a common-garden experiment to test the TPH. We show that the proportion of major workers declines with increasing latitude, independently of body size and colony size, and is best predicted by the number of days, annually, during which workers can nurse brood. Experimental results further demonstrate that colonies rapidly and plastically adjust caste structure in response to environmental conditions. Our findings reveal that thrifty phenotypes can emerge in superorganisms and could represent a conserved developmental response to environmental stress. By extending a central hypothesis from human biology to social insects, this work provides a unifying framework for understanding how developmental plasticity shapes adaptation across levels of biological organization.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".