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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The influence of the physical environment on the self-organised foraging patterns of ants.
TL;DR: Experimental data and theoretical analyses show that the collective patterns can arise independently of behavioural changes of individual scouts and can result, through self-organising processes, from the physico-chemical properties of the environment that alter the dynamics of information transfer by chemical trails.
Journal ArticleDOI
Collective foraging in a stingless bee: dependence on food profitability and sequence of discovery
Veronika M. Schmidt,Dirk Louis P. Schorkopf,Michael Hrncir,Ronaldo Zucchi,Friedrich G. Barth +4 more
TL;DR: The ability of Trigona recursa, a scent trail-laying stingless bee, to allocate foragers to the more profitable of two food sources was examined, with significantly more recruits landed at the less profitable food source.
Journal ArticleDOI
Distributed leadership and adaptive decision-making in the ant Tetramorium caespitum
TL;DR: This model demonstrates how the modulations performed by leaders drive the colony to select the most profitable food source among several ones and highlights how a minority of individuals can influence collective decisions in societies based on a distributed leadership.
Journal ArticleDOI
Dynamics of aggregation in Lasius niger (Formicidae): influence of polyethism
TL;DR: Experimental results supported by the results of the model, show that ants do not change their own behaviour when the two groups are together, and the decrease of the aggregation of brood-tenders in the mixed case can be explained by a difference in the dynamics between brood-Tenders and foragers.
Journal ArticleDOI
When the group denies individual nutritional wisdom
TL;DR: This study provides evidence for a novel potential cost to group living, and shows that group feeding behaviour cannot always be simply predicted from individual preferences.
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.