Food transport in ants: Do Lasius niger foragers maximize their individual load?

The decision for a Lasius niger forager to lay a chemical trail and launch recruitment to a food source is governed by an internal individual threshold. The value of this threshold triggering chemical communication is not set by the maximal capacity of the crop. Actually, trail-laying ants are still able to drink additional food encountered on their homeward journey. The partial filling of the crop by trail-laying ants may be a means for the ants to shorten foraging trips and to speed up the information updating within the nest. Moreover, by partially filling their crop, foragers keep a potential for sampling resources and for tasting other encountered food sources.