How do ants allocate worker on searching foods?

[oemants]

I would like to know on following issues on how ants allocate worker in term of percentage on foods

1) Initial stage on searching for foods sources, how many percentage of ants are participated within community for searching?
2) Once foods sources are found, how many percentage of ants are participated within community for working on foods?

Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance

[Antswithlenn]

So the number of ants that go out to hunt initially is around a quarter to a half of the ants depending on the size of the colony, once they have found food, if the prey item is alive or a large bit of insect, more workers go, around three quarters, depending on the size, but if the colony is really new, only like four really go out at once to to search.

[oemants]

I would like to know on following issues as shown below:

1) How do ants communicate to each other on how many ants go out and search for foods?
If not, they may all go out searching for foods at the same time.

2) How many job roles are classified within ants community?

Do you have any suggestions?
Thank you very much for any suggestions (^v^)

[BlueLance]

Ants use phermones to communicate, but once they have workers its usually done by age, Older ants forage/scavenge, whilst younger ants stay to take care of the brood or other similar things.

So once you get workers, your nanitics will be the main group going out, and then once more workers come, the original workers will go out as well to scavenge etc. Even then though not all ants will leave, but once food has been found ants who are doing nothing may also come out to help deal with the food.

As for jobs, it kinda depends. Queen has her job, Then there are the foragers/scavengers, Then the Youngest ants usually tend to the young (Babysitters?) After that there will most likely be ants that stay stationed near the nest entrance or directly in it. I am not sure how that is determined but I would assume if the colony has majors etc they would probably take position there by default.

but the important part is that ants do communicate, just in ways we don't.

[oemants]

At initial stage, let assume 25% of the ants searching for foods, is there any planning for searching? if not, they go in all directions and randomly searching.

1) Initially what drive the ants to go certain direction for foods searching?, such as Sunlight, humidity, temperature
2) would the ants form different groups for searching foods?
3) If yes, how many groups would the ants form? such 1 go East, 2 go South, 3 go West, 4 go North
4) Based on groups, do the ants equally distribute the number of ants on searching from different directions?

Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks, to everyone very much for any suggestions (^v^)

[anonymous1234568]

1) Most of the time, only less then 20% of the colony will go in search of food, once food is found, they will go back to the colony and ethier get more workers or collect some of the returned foragers/scavenger, but most of the time, never more then 50% of the colony will be out for food.

2)If the food is large like a mouse or rabbit, if the colony has majors, they will send them with about 20 times more workers that are going as escorts and food carriers. No more then 50% of the colony usually go out in this part of the operation. If requiring more, thell will just make more runs.