DOI: 10.5061/dryad.wdbrv15zx
title: Data from: Life expectancy in ants explains variation in helpfulness, regardless of phylogenetic relatedness

description: Rescue behavior aims at removing an individual from harm. Ants are
 particularly known for such helpfulness and, perhaps not coincidentally,
 also show the highest level of social organization in the animal kingdom,
 i.e., eusociality. However, even among social species such as ants, there
 is a huge variation in rescue proneness, and little is understood about
 the underlying causes of this variation. In this study, we explore the
 relationship between helpfulness in the form of rescue and life
 expectancy, focusing on 14 ant species with diverse phylogenetic
 affiliations. We posit that species with longer worker life expectancies
 are more prone to engaging in rescue actions. To test this, we assessed
 worker lifespan in each species and conducted behavioral tests simulating
 entrapment scenarios involving a nestmate ensnared by an artificial
 obstacle. Observed behaviors involved contact with the nestmate, digging
 around it, pulling at its body parts, and biting the entrapping obstacle.
 Our findings reveal that species with longer worker life expectancies
 exhibit higher proneness to rescue endangered nestmates, irrespective of
 phylogenetic relatedness. Furthermore, we found no trace of a phylogenetic
 signal in the life expectancies or helpfulness of workers belonging to
 different species. The results underscore the significance of life
 expectancy as a key factor influencing the likelihood of rescue behavior
 in ants. This phenomenon warrants further investigation, given the varied
 physiologies, life histories, and ecologies observed among species.
 Nevertheless, the impact of life expectancy on behavioral patterns in
 social insects suggests that this parameter is likely significant across
 diverse taxa. Keywords: ants, altruism, Formicidae, life expectancy,
 pro-social behavior, rescue behavior.
description: # Data from: Life expectancy in ants explains variation in helpfulness,
 regardless of phylogenetic relatedness
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wdbrv15zx](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wdbrv15zx) ## Description of the data and file structure The data were collected to investigate the relationship between life expectancy and rescue behavior in ants. We gathered ants belonging to 14 species. We collected 5 ant colonies of each species (in total, 70 ant colonies were collected). We analyzed survivorship of ants through long-term monitoring of mortality in standardized conditions and we analyzed ant rescue behavior via simulations of rescue scenarios using a controlled entrapment setup. We also included phylogenetic analyses of the studied ant species. ### Files and variables #### File: Dataset\_Ants\_LifeExpectancy\_RescueBehaviour\_2024.xlsx **Description:** The **Survivorship sheet** contains data about the mortality of ants. We monitored mortality daily until day 250 since the establishment of each survival group. We analyzed the mortality of a total of 3500 individuals (14 species × 5 colonies × 50 individuals = 3500 individuals). The **Rescue Duration sheet** contains information about the duration of particular rescue behaviors observed in rescue behavior tests (in seconds). We performed 50 tests for each colony, amounting to 3500 tests conducted (14 species × 5 colonies × 50 tests = 3500 tests). **File: Raw_Phylogenetic_Tree_of_Ants.txt**: The **Phylogenetic Tree of Ants** file contains information about the raw genetic tree from the 14 ant species in Newick format. ##### Variables * colony: number of the colony * species: name of the ant species * time: the day of ant death * status: indicates whether the data is censored (assigned as 1) or uncensored (assigned as 2) * contact duration: duration of contact behavior in seconds * digging duration: duration of digging behavior in seconds * pulling duration: duration of pulling behavior in seconds * thread biting duration: duration of thread biting behavior in seconds