Functional and mechanistic diversity in ant tandem communication.

Communication is fundamental to the organization of animal societies, often resulting in the convergent evolution of similar social behavior across lineages. However, this similarity may conceal underlying functional and mechanistic differences. Here we combined network and information-theoretic analysis to quantify how tandem recruitment is distinguishable between two ant genera, and . We show that uses tandem running to recruit additional recruiters, while uses it principally to move the passive majority of their colony, a task that accomplishes with a different behavior, social carrying. Accordingly, the network structure of tandems was dissimilar to that of , instead resembling the social-carrying networks in . Furthermore, our information-theoretical analysis on movement trajectories revealed that tandem runs lack bidirectional information transfer, the signature of route learning in . By quantifying the diversity of similar communication systems, this study increases the resolution of our understanding of animal societies.