DOI: 10.5061/dryad.c866t1gcp
title: Daily activity time series of ants, Camponotus japonicus

description: Social insects often share tasks among individuals. In this study, we
 analyzed the foraging activity of ants (Camponotus japonicus) and recorded
 the daily passage event counts of individual workers between a nest
 chamber and a foraging arena using five monodomous colonies. We proposed
 two hypotheses on the time series of foraging frequency by individual
 worker ants: (i) Regarding the time series of foraging frequency by
 individual worker ants, the foraging frequency on a certain day could be
 expressed by the product of the foraging frequency on the previous day and
 the exponential of a random number.(ii) The random numbers are correlated
 between some pairs of worker ants. The results for the five tested ant
 colonies showed that the probability of total daily passage counts (the
 sum of an individual's passage count) were characterized by a
 log-normal distribution. The worker ants behaved differently in terms of
 active days and foraging frequency. However, for &gt;54% of the worker
 ants, the probability of the daily passage count was characterized by a
 log-normal distribution, and these worker ants performed &gt;72% of
 the tasks in each colony. Furthermore, for &gt;73% of the worker ants,
 the time development of passage count was confirmed to be mathematically
 modelled; the logarithmic first difference between the passage counts on a
 certain day and those on the previous day was a random normal variable.
 These results support hypothesis (i). Additionally, the random numbers,
 that were equivalent to the logarithmic first difference, were correlated
 for some pairs of worker ants. These results support hypothesis (ii).
description: Using an RFID tag system (SK-Electronics CO., Ltd., Japan), we
 obtained the count data for five colonies of ants, <em>Camponotus
 japonicus,</em> collected from the Higashi-Hiroshima campus of
 Hiroshima University. The colonies A, B, and C contained a queen ant, but
 the others, D and E, were without one. For each colony, almost 150 workers
 attached the RFID tag on their thoraxes with resin glue (Kiyohara UVR,
 KIYOHARA & Co., Ltd.) without exposure to
 CO<sub>2</sub>. The observation started one week after the
 workers attached RFID tags to avoid observing the adjustment state of
 workers. The RFID reader was installed on the tube's roof, connecting
 each colony's nest chamber and the foraging arena.
description: # Daily activity time series of ants, Camponotus Japonicus
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c866t1gcp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c866t1gcp) Using an RFID tag system (SK-Electronics CO., Ltd., Japan), we obtained the count data for five colonies of ants, Camponotus japonicus, collected from the Higashi-Hiroshima campus of Hiroshima University. The colonies A, B, and C contained a queen ant, but the others, D and E, were without one. For each colony, almost 150 workers attached the RFID tag on their thoraxes with resin glue (Kiyohara UVR, KIYOHARA & Co., Ltd.) without exposure to CO<sub>2</sub>. The observation started one week after the workers attached RFID tags to avoid observing the adjustment state of workers. The RFID reader was installed on the tube's roof, connecting each colony's nest chamber and the foraging arena. ## Description of the data and file structure There are five CSV files corresponding to each colony's name described above. The first column is an index of workers in a colony, and the first rows after the second column represent the day observed count data for each worker. The other cells at the ith row and the jth column represent the count data of the ith worker on the jth day.