ABSTRACT
Attacephalotes workers that have found a food source recruit nestmates with the aid of a trail laid by dipping the tip of the gaster on the ground. The collection of food by leaf-cutting ants is clearly not a process that can be understood simply in terms of a trail of pheromone. The ability of ants to return repeatedly to specific cutting sites may well depend on their ability to integrate the various kinds of information, including patterning of chemical trail signals. Ants on their own marked territory show a much reduced tendency to leave it, and a greater tendency to initiate fights with aliens particularly when in a group. Refuse particles presented on the food trails are normally picked up by ants going away from the nest, and are taken back to the nest entrance before being transported to the rubbish dumps.
