Investigação da performance individual de operárias em formigas: influência de fatores internos, externos e metodologias

Abstract

Ants, with around 16,000 described species, display a wide variety of feeding habits, foraging strategies, ecological roles, and population sizes and densities. Common mechanisms across all species include division of labor and task allocation among workers, which function in a self-organizing manner, without central control. These mechanisms are the focus of numerous studies aiming to explain how the uneven distribution of the workload is determined and promotes colony efficiency. In this systematic review, we analyze the frequency and geographic distribution of scientific articles that investigate the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on individual worker performance. The results indicate that over the last 45 years, 28 articles were published by 32 institutions in 10 countries, with the USA standing out as the most influential country in the field, possibly due to the contribution of researcher Anna Dornhaus. Authorship is predominantly male, highlighting the need for public policies and attitudinal changes that promote the participation and recognition of women researchers in the field. The journals with the highest number of publications target researchers in animal behavior in general. The articles investigated 11 tasks/behaviors in 17 species and evaluated the effects of 14 factors (9 intrinsic and 5 extrinsic) on the mechanisms of division of labor and task allocation. The findings point to the need for expanding studies on individual performance to cover more species in order to better understand the mechanisms of division of labor and task allocation. Furthermore, there is confusion in the nomenclature and methods used for categorizing workers, with variations in the adopted methods, which may be biasing the results. Our study highlights the need to expand research on individual worker performance across more species and to improve methodological standardization to advance the understanding of division of labor and task allocation mechanisms.