摘要
An intriguing question in behavioral biology is whether consistent individual differences （calledanimal personalities） relate to variation in cognitive performance because commonly measuredpersonality traits may be associated with risk-reward trade-offs. Social insects, whose learningabilities have been extensively characterized, show consistent behavioral variability, both at colonyand at individual level. We investigated the possible link between personality traits and learningperformance in the carpenter ant Camponotus aethiops. Exploratory activity, sociability, and ag-gression were assessed twice in ant foragers. Behaviors differed among individuals, they werepartly repeatable across time and exploratory activity correlated positively with aggression.Learning abilities were quantified by differential conditioning of the maxilla-labium extension re-sponse, a task that requires cue perception and information storage. We found that exploratory ac-tivity of individual ants significantly predicted learning performance： ＂active-explorers＂ wereslower in learning the task than ＂inactive-explorers＂. The results suggest for the first time a link be-tween a personality trait and cognitive performance in eusocial insects, and that the underlying in-dividual variability could affect colony performance and success.
