A new case of jumping behaviour in ants, as part of the foraging strategy.

We demonstrated for the first time in this laboratory study that the tree-dwelling ant Polyrhachis laboriosa can jump down beyond any context of escape or predation. When it is necessary to jump to reach an isolated food supply or explore a larger territory, workers of P. laboriosa jump down from a height of 5-100 cm. The characteristics of this active jumping display are described here. During foraging or exploratory conditions, the workers learnt to jump and integrated this behaviour into their strategy of exploitation of the 3D-environment. Under laboratory conditions, they began to jump earlier and more frequently as a function of their motivation during successive tests.