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MINI REVIEW article
Front. Insect Sci.
Sec. Insect Neurobiology
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/finsc.2025.1581307
This article is part of the Research TopicWomen in Insect Science, Volume IIView all 3 articles
The role of dopamine in foraging decisions in social insects
Provisionally accepted- 1Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
- 2Denison University, Granville, Ohio, United States
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Animals often need to make decisions about whether to confront risks, and climate change is making these decisions even more critical by increasing environmental stress. Biogenic amines are crucial for modulating behavior in all animals and may contribute to behavioral adaptations to changing environments through supporting decision-making involving risk. Our review focuses on the neuromodulator dopamine in insects because of its role in risk-related behavioral choices, particularly in the context of ant foraging activity. In ants, individual decisions contribute to the collective regulation of foraging activity. We consider the role of dopamine in the regulation of collective foraging activity to manage water loss in the desert red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus, in the southwest US that is undergoing severe drought. We discuss dopaminergic circuitry and its involvement in decisions about foraging risk, drawing from both the vertebrate and invertebrate literature, to outline areas of future research in the role of dopamine in collective decision-making in response to changing environmental conditions.
Keywords: Decision-making1, foraging2, insect3, Dopamine4, ant5
Received: 21 Feb 2025; Accepted: 01 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ye, Kamhi and Gordon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, United States
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