Fig. 1

Daily rhythms in colony activity. The top panel shows the experimental timeline and the bottom graphs show the mean (± SE) daily extranidal activity of the ant colony during each phase of the experiment. During the entire experiment, the foraging arena was kept at 25ºC, 70% rH and under oscillating 12 h:12 h light–dark (LD) cycles. Undisturbed phases under light–dark cycles are shown in blue, while experimental phases of disturbance are shown in orange (mark-and-recapture of foragers) and green (sampling of ants for RNASeq). For each plot, colored lines connecting the dots represent average activity while black bars represent one standard error around the mean. The y-axis represents number of ants and the x-axis represents Zeitgeber Time (ZT) during the 12 h:12 h LD cycle. The shaded part of the plots represents the dark phase (ZT12-24). The number of ants actively feeding or present on the feeding stage is plotted as the feeding activity. The general foraging activity is the number of ants present in the foraging arena but not on the feeding stage. The total activity is the sum of feeding and foraging activity, representing the total extranidal activity of the colony at a given time. The number of observations used to calculate the mean (± SE) activity for each phase are shown in parenthesis at the top of the plots. Missing data points during ‘Initial entrainment’ and ‘Mark-and-recapture’ were due to inability to get accurate count of ants from video frames and a recording failure, respectively