Central-place foragers must learn the resource and visual landscapes around them when they are in a new environment, to facilitate efficient foraging and navigation. We investigated how the colony-level exploration strategy of Temnothorax rugatulus ants changes over time. For this study, we introduced ants to a novel environment by placing them in a foraging arena and tracking their movements over 3 days for 5 h per day, prohibiting access to the arena at other times. To test whether any changes in movement behavior are due to chemical markings, we replaced the paper floor on the third day. We found that colony-level exploration activity decreased with time, but only within a roughly 1 m radius around the nest, possibly reflecting a shift from familiarization or marking walks to searching. Individuals’ movements overall also became slightly straighter and faster across and within days. However, unlike learning walks of other ant species, T. rugatulus ants did not pause more often when facing toward the nest. Reactions to chemical markings seem to play a minor role in our observed effects, as the exploratory behavior did not reset after the floor cover had been replaced. Thus, ant colony exploration and search behaviors adapt to the familiarity of their environment by becoming more dispersive, possibly aiding in search efficiency. This must be considered in lab studies on the foraging activity and behavior of ants.

中心地觅食者在新的环境中必须了解周围的资源和视觉景观，以促进高效的觅食和导航。我们研究了Temnothorax rugatulus蚂蚁的群体水平探索策略如何随时间变化。在这项研究中，我们将蚂蚁置于一个新的环境中，将它们放置在觅食场所，并在 3 天内跟踪它们的活动，每天 5 小时，禁止在其他时间进入该场所。为了测试运动行为的任何变化是否是由于化学标记造成的，我们在第三天更换了纸地板。我们发现，群体层面的探索活动随着时间的推移而减少，但仅限于巢穴周围大约 1 m 的半径范围内，这可能反映了从熟悉或标记行走到搜索的转变。个人的整体动作在几天之内也变得稍微更直和更快。然而，与其他蚂蚁物种的学习行走不同，T. rugatulus蚂蚁在面向巢穴时并没有更频繁地停下来。对化学标记的反应似乎在我们观察到的效果中起着次要作用，因为在更换地板覆盖物后探索行为并未重置。因此，蚁群的探索和搜索行为通过变得更加分散来适应对环境的熟悉程度，这可能有助于提高搜索效率。在有关蚂蚁觅食活动和行为的实验室研究中必须考虑这一点。