The mental association of perceived signals is a characteristic held by animals. Here, we examine whether Myrmica sabuleti, an ant belonging to a species with no particularly specialized morphological or anatomical features, and which can associate visual signals with a time of day, can also associate odors and time of day. Ants of two colonies collectively trained to thyme odor from 8 pm to 7 am and to lavender odor from 8 am to 7 pm reacted mostly to thyme when tested at 4 am and mostly to lavender when tested at 4 pm in the presence of the two odors. Ants of two other colonies trained to rosemary odor from 8 am to 7 pm and to orange zest odor from 8 pm to 7 am, when tested in front of the two odors, reacted essentially to rosemary at 4 pm and essentially to orange zest at 4 am. The ants have thus associated each odor with the time of the day when it was perceived during training. Two supplementary experiments showed that the weaker response to the odor which did not correspond to the time of the day of its training was not due to an aversion toward a less recently perceived cue. The ability to associate an odor with a particular time of the day could be advantageous for ants to select time periods for e.g., optimally and safely collecting food.

感知信号的心理关联是动物所具有的特征。在这里，我们研究了Myrmica sabuleti（一种没有特别特殊的形态或解剖特征的物种的蚂蚁，它可以将视觉信号与一天中的时间联系起来）是否也可以将气味和一天中的时间联系起来。两个群体的蚂蚁在晚上 8 点到早上 7 点接受百里香气味训练，在上午 8 点到晚上 7 点接受薰衣草气味训练，在凌晨 4 点测试时，主要对百里香做出反应；而在下午 4 点测试，在两种气味存在的情况下，主要对薰衣草做出反应。 。另外两个蚁群的蚂蚁在上午 8 点至晚上 7 点训练迷迭香气味，并在晚上 8 点至上午 7 点训练橙皮气味，当在两种气味面前进行测试时，下午 4 点主要对迷迭香做出反应，下午 4 点主要对橙皮气味做出反应。是。因此，蚂蚁将每种气味与训练期间感知到该气味的时间联系起来。两项补充实验表明，对与其训练时间不相符的气味的较弱反应并不是由于对最近感知到的暗示的厌恶。将气味与一天中的特定时间联系起来的能力可能有利于蚂蚁选择时间段，例如最佳且安全地收集食物。