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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Journal ArticleDOI
Trail-Laying Behaviour as a Function of Resource Quality in theAnt Camponotusrufipes
TL;DR: It is reported that the trail-laying behaviour in the nectar-feeding ant, Camponotus rufipes, varies with the concentration of the sucrose solutions collected, suggesting that these chemical trails provide both an orientation cue between the nest and the food source, as previously suggested for Camp onotus ants.
Journal ArticleDOI
No evidence for tactile communication of direction in foraging Lasius ants
Stefan Popp,Stefan Popp,Phillip Buckham-Bonnett,Sophie E. F. Evison,Elva J. H. Robinson,Tomer J. Czaczkes +5 more
TL;DR: The results increase the burden of proof required for other claims of physical communication of direction in ants, but do not completely rule out this possibility.
Modelling collective movement and transport network formation in living systems
TL;DR: The emergence of collective patterns from repeated local interactions between individuals is a common feature to most living systems, spanning a variety of scales from cells to animals and humans.
Journal ArticleDOI
Foraging through multiple nest holes: An impediment to collective decision-making in ants.
Marine Lehue,Claire Detrain +1 more
TL;DR: This study investigated how an additional nest entrance influences the ability of Myrmica rubra ant colonies to exploit two food sources of different quality and to select the most rewarding one and found that the mobilisation of workers doubled in two-entrance nests but that ants were less likely to reach a food source once they exited the nest.
Posted ContentDOI
Irrational risk aversion in ants is driven by perceptual mechanisms
TL;DR: The results thus strongly support perceptual mechanisms driving risk-aversion in ants, and demonstrate that the behaviour of individual foragers can be a very poor predictor of colony-level behaviour.
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.