[HN Gopher] Ant responses to social isolation resemble those of ...
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       Ant responses to social isolation resemble those of humans
        
       Author : dnetesn
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2021-04-07 20:21 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | rossdavidh wrote:
       | "Isolated people become lonely, depressed, and anxious, develop
       | addictions more easily, and suffer from a weakened immune system
       | and impaired overall health," added Professor Inon Scharf, lead
       | author of the article and cooperation partner of the Mainz
       | research group at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
       | 
       | ...like, say, an addiction to social media?
        
         | gumby wrote:
         | I found social media to have helped me during the lockdowns of
         | the past year. I was not a huge user before but over t past
         | year I think I've spent a couple of hours a day staying in
         | touch with people electronically, often mediated/enabled by FB
         | ("Hey, why don't I call so-and-so?").
        
       | pks016 wrote:
       | I have worked with ants specifically fragmentation of ant
       | colonies. I would say the responses to isolation are much more
       | severe than human isolation. If an individual ant get separated
       | from the colony, it will just die (Mostly). Also they usually
       | can't join other ant colonies because of colony specific
       | odor/hydrocarbon.
        
         | User23 wrote:
         | I don't imagine the typical individual human surviving very
         | long under total isolation either.
        
           | rriepe wrote:
           | If you adjust for lifespan, we probably do worse overall.
        
         | k_sze wrote:
         | A counter anecdatum: I have been keeping a lone, unmated
         | Pseudoneoponera rufipes queen since August 2020. Since she is
         | unmated, she cannot produce any worker. She just keeps eating
         | all the eggs she lays after a few days.
         | 
         | I keep her in a test tube nest and feed her fruit flies. She's
         | still alive and kicking as of this writing. And she still has
         | hunter instincts when I give her a weakened, but live little
         | fly.
         | 
         | Maybe queens are more resilient to solitude?
        
           | op03 wrote:
           | The Buddha was pretty much a queen.
        
           | pks016 wrote:
           | Definitely.Queen can produce the whole colony. She is more
           | resilient than workers and vital part of the colony.
           | Depending on the species, they can live longer or shorter but
           | like the article says the life won't be smooth.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | So, cruel experiment.
        
           | rsync wrote:
           | "A counter anecdatum: I have been keeping a lone, unmated
           | Pseudoneoponera rufipes queen since August 2020."
           | 
           | Aren't you comparing very unlike things ?
           | 
           | Specifically, your _queen_ is roughly analogous to an
           | individual, as we think of it. Your parent speaks of a worker
           | ant that is more analogous to an individuals toe or tastebud
           | or something like that ...
           | 
           | To put it another way, you have one "ant" (a colony of one
           | individual). Your parent has zero ant (colonies).
        
             | coldtea wrote:
             | The ants, queen or regular worker, are all complete
             | organisms, so the explanation falls short.
             | 
             | Just that the queen is more used to live in isolation (some
             | ant species/colonies just have a single queen ant), whereas
             | the workers are more used to cooperation and collective
             | existance.
        
               | rsync wrote:
               | "The ants, queen or regular worker, are all complete
               | organisms, so the explanation falls short."
               | 
               | Yes, but they are not "individuals" as we commonly
               | reference.
               | 
               | It's loose, but the best analogy for an human individual
               | is the _queen_ ant /bee/termite and the entire hive, or
               | nest - with all the workers, etc. - are part of that
               | queens own "extended phenotype":
               | 
               | "After the gene-centered view of evolution was developed
               | in the mid 1970s, non-reproductive individuals were seen
               | as an extended phenotype of the genes, which are the
               | primary beneficiaries of natural selection."[1]
               | 
               | An individual worker ant is, to the queen, better thought
               | of as one of your hairs or one of your tastebuds.
               | 
               | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality#Paradox
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-08 23:01 UTC)