# behav: the oddity about the highly inactive ants (Temnothorax rugatulus)

<< Social insect colonies are highly successful, self-organized complex systems. Surprisingly however, most social insect colonies contain large numbers of highly inactive workers. Although this may seem inefficient, it may be that inactive workers actually contribute to colony function >>

Daniel Charbonneau, Takao Sasaki, Anna Dornhaus. Who needs ‘lazy’ workers? Inactive workers act as a ‘reserve’ labor force replacing active workers, but inactive workers are not replaced when they are removed. PLOS ONE 12(9): e0184074. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184074 Sep 6, 2017

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184074

<< Analyzing the video recordings revealed that a colony breaks down into four main demographics [..]: inactive, lazy ants; so-called walkers that spend most of their time just wandering around the nest; foragers that take care of outside tasks such as foraging and building protective walls from tiny rocks; and nurses in charge of rearing the brood >>

Lazy ants make themselves useful in unexpected ways. Sep 8, 2017

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-09-lazy-ants-unexpected-ways.html