Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2016-03-02T23:16:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 WaldemarAlvesDaSilvaNeto_DISSERT.pdf: 468163 bytes, checksum: f08e3ba40bea69faf17f824fa2df41be (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-03-04T23:52:21Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 WaldemarAlvesDaSilvaNeto_DISSERT.pdf: 468163 bytes, checksum: f08e3ba40bea69faf17f824fa2df41be (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-04T23:52:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 WaldemarAlvesDaSilvaNeto_DISSERT.pdf: 468163 bytes, checksum: f08e3ba40bea69faf17f824fa2df41be (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-26 / No presente trabalho, avaliamos o efeito da dist?ncia do alimento, sucesso de captura e tamanho do alimento e taxa de recompensa nas decis?es de forrageio tomadas por formigas da esp?cie Dinoponera quadriceps. Tamb?m investigamos, medindo o tempo de perman?ncia em cada ?rea, a influ?ncia do aprendizado no desempenho das oper?rias ao longo de sucessivas viagens. Foram simulados quatro cen?rios. Cada oper?ria realizou 10 viagens em cada cen?rio. Cen?rio 1: oper?rias sempre encontravam alimento de alta qualidade; Cen?rio 2: oper?rias encontravam alimento de alta qualidade em somente 50% das viagens; Cen?rio 3: oper?rias encontravam alimento de alta e baixa qualidade com probabilidades de ocorr?ncia de 0,5 para cada tamanho de alimento. Cen?rio 4: oper?rias tinham tr?s possibilidades, encontrar alimento de alta qualidade (33%), encontrar alimento de baixa qualidade (33%) e n?o encontrar alimento. Em todos os cen?rios, havia duas rotas poss?veis de explora??o, uma com 300 cm e outra com 600 cm de comprimento. A pesquisa mostrou que oper?rias da esp?cie D. quadr?ceps tendem a retornar ao mesmo local onde o alimento foi encontrado na viagem anterior, n?o importando a dist?ncia, tamanho do alimento ou taxa de recompensa. Nos casos de viagens sem captura, oper?rias eram mais propensas a trocar de ?rea em busca de alimento. No entanto, no cen?rio 4 essa decis?o de ?troca? foi menos evidente, possivelmente pela maior din?mica do cen?rio. Resultados tamb?m indicaram um processo de aprendizado das rotas de explora??o assim como das condi??es das ?reas de explora??o. Com a repeti??o das viagens, forrageadoras reduziram o tempo de busca nas ?reas nas viagens que n?o capturavam alimento e rapidamente trocavam de ?rea. / When searching for food, animals often make decisions of where to go, how long to stay in a foraging area and whether or not to return to the last visited spot. These decisions can be enhanced by cognitive traits and adjusted based on previous experience. In social insects such as ants, foraging efficiency have an impact on both individual and colony level. The present study investigated, in the laboratory, the effect of distance from food, capture success and food size, and reward rate on decisions of where to forage in Dinoponera quadriceps, a ponerine ant that forage solitarily and individually make their foraging decisions. We also investigated the influence of learning on the performance of workers over successive trips searching for food by measuring the patch residence time in each foraging trip. Four scenarios were created differing in food reward rates, food size offered and distances colony-food site. Our work has shown that as a rule-of-thumb, workers of D. quadriceps return to the place where a prey item was found on the previous trip, regardless of distance, food size and reward rate. When ants did not capture preys, they were more likely to change path to search for food. However, in one of the scenarios, this decision to switch paths when unsuccessful was less evident, possibly due to the greater variation of possible outcomes ants could experience in this scenario and cognitive constraints of D. quadriceps to predict variations of food distribution. Our results also indicated a learning process of routes of exploration as well as the food site conditions for exploration. After repeated trips, foragers reduced the patch residence time in areas that they did not capture food and quickly changed of foraging area, increasing their foraging efficiency.