Ants Buczkowski G. And Bennett G. 2009 July-August. Ethology: International Journal of Behavioural Biology. 115: 1091-9.

Buczkowski and Bennett are interested in studying movement of ant colonies. Previous research established that social organisms are capable of relocating en masse: authors devised ways to observe Pharaoh ants (Monomorium pharaonis). The Pharaoh ant is a highly polygynous species (a single male mates with many females) and makes little investment in nest construction: these two factors are what prompted authors to select this particular species for study, since they correlate with an increased propensity for both migration and "budding," the splitting off into separate smaller colonies. Authors discuss the reproductive strategy of the Pharaoh ant's budding, which they claim "dramatically increases the probability of successful colony founding." The causes and consequences of budding in an ant colony remain underexplored, and authors...

First, authors examined budding into multiple nests in order to "determine the effect of increasing the number of bud nests on the fragmentation pattern and the resulting colony social structure" (1092). Second, protein markers were utilized to look for possible changes in food allocation resulting from budding, by comparing pattern of food distribution in fragmented (i.e, those that had undergone "budding") and intact nests alike. Authors found that overall distibution of bud nests was uneven but within each bud nest there was no evidence of an uneven split between different specialized types of Pharaoh ant -- in other words, the Pharaoh ant can "exert social control over colony size and caste proportions during budding." It was additionally discovered that, even while undergoing multiple fragmentations, the Pharaoh ants themselves preferred to maintain a minimum group size, which they authors calculate as…