Bundling and segregation affect pheromone deposition, but not choice, in an ant

Abstract

Behavioural economists have identified many psychological manipulations which affect perceived value. A prominent example of this is bundling, in which several small gains (or costs) are experienced as more valuable (or costly) than if the same total amount is presented together. While extensively demonstrated in humans, to our knowledge this effect has never been investigated in an animal, let alone an invertebrate. We trained individual Lasius niger workers to two of three conditions in which either costs (travel distance), gains (sucrose reward), or both were either bundled or segregated: (1) both costs and gains bundled, (2) both segregated, and (3) only gains segregated. We recorded pheromone deposition on the ants’ return trips to the nest as measure of perceived value. After training, we offer the ants a binary choice between odours associated with the treatments. While bundling treatment did not affect binary choice, it strongly influenced pheromone deposition. Ants deposited c. 80% more pheromone when rewards were segregated but costs bundled as compared with both costs and rewards being bundled. This pattern is further complicated by the pairwise experience each animal made, and which of the treatments it experiences first during training. This demonstrates that even insects are influenced by bundling effects. We propose that the deviation between binary choice and pheromone deposition in this case may be due to a possible linearity in distance perception in ants, while almost all other sensory perception in animals is logarithmic.