Journal ArticleDOI
Modulation of trail laying in the ant Lasius niger (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and its role in the collective selection of a food source
TLDR
Simulations of this model showed that the observed modulation of trail laying with respect to food source quality is sufficient in itself to account for the systematic selection of the richer source seen in the experiments.Abstract:
Foragers of the ant Lasius nigerexploiting a 1 Msugar source were found to lay 43 %more trail marks than those exploiting a 0.05 or a 0.1 Msource. The trail laying per forager decreased during the course of individual recruitment episodes, and the mean lifetime of the trail pheromone was estimated to be 47 min. A mathematical function describing the probability that a forager chooses one of two paths in relation to the amount of trail pheromone on them closely fitted experimental data. These results were incorporated into a model describing the recruitment dynamics of L. niger.Simulations of this model showed that the observed modulation of trail laying with respect to food source quality is sufficient in itself to account for the systematic selection of the richer source seen in the experiments.read more
Citations
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Book ChapterDOI
Biological Foundations of Swarm Intelligence
TL;DR: This first chapter uses examples from the insect world to illustrate how patterns are formed, how collective decisions are made and how groups comprised of large numbers of insects are able to move as one.
Journal ArticleDOI
Temperature limits trail following behaviour through pheromone decay in ants
Louise van Oudenhove,Louise van Oudenhove,Elise Billoir,Raphaël Boulay,Raphaël Boulay,Carlos Bernstein,Xim Cerdá +6 more
TL;DR: The results highlighted that the effect of high temperatures on recruitment intensity was partly due to pheromone evaporation, which might affect dominant species relying on chemical recruitment, more than subordinate ant species, less dependent on chemical communication and less sensitive to high temperatures.
Journal ArticleDOI
Self-Organized Discrimination of Resources
TL;DR: This analysis reveals that the group becomes better at discriminating between similar resources as it grows in size, and the discrimination mechanism is flexible and the group readily switches to a better suited resource as it appears in the environment.
Journal ArticleDOI
Pheromone communication in ants: a detailed analysis of concentration-dependent decisions in three species
TL;DR: Ants’ decision making processes in trail following are best explained by psychophysical theory (PT), which describes the relationship between physical stimuli, sensory perception and decision making in humans, other primates, birds and insects.
Journal ArticleDOI
Individual and collective problem-solving in a foraging context in the leaf-cutting ant Atta colombica
Audrey Dussutour,Audrey Dussutour,Audrey Dussutour,Jean-Louis Deneubourg,Samuel Beshers,Vincent Fourcassié +5 more
TL;DR: It is found that the size and shape of the fragments of foraging material brought back to the nest were significantly modified when the constraint was placed on the trail: independent of their size, forager ants cut smaller and rounder fragments in the presence of a height constraint than in its absence.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The self-organizing exploratory pattern of the argentine ant
TL;DR: A minimal model shows how the exploratory pattern may be generated by the individual workers' simple trail-laying and -following behavior, illustrating how complex collective structures in insect colonies may be based on self-organization.
Journal ArticleDOI
Collective decision-making in honey bees: how colonies choose among nectar sources
TL;DR: It is suggested that honey bee colonies possess decentralized decision-making because it combines effectiveness with simplicity of communication and computation within a colony.
Journal ArticleDOI
Trails and U-turns in the Selection of a Path by the Ant Lasius niger
TL;DR: The selection of the path is shown to be a collective process whereby trail laying and following amplifies small initial differences in the traffic on each path caused by these three mechanisms, and the foragers show no significant tendency to follow the path they used previously.
Journal ArticleDOI
Collective decision making through food recruitment
TL;DR: A series of experiments shows how the andLasius niger uses its trail recruitment system to select between two food sources, simultaneously presented with to 1M sucrose solution and when offered a 1M solution together with a 0.1M solution.
Journal ArticleDOI
A model of collective nectar source selection by honey bees : self-organization through simple rules
Scott Camazine,James Sneyd +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model that describes the honey bee colony's decision-making process, which consists of a system of non-linear differential equations describing the activity of the foraging bees.