Abstract
Communication improves decision-making for group-living animals, especially during foraging, facilitating exploitation of resources. Here we model the trail-based foraging strategy of Pharaoh’s ants to understand the limits and constraints of a specific group foraging strategy. Pharaoh’s ants (Monomorium pharaonis) exploit the geometry of trail networks bifurcations to make U-turns, when walking the wrong way. However, 7% of foragers perform apparently incorrect U-turns. These seemingly maladaptive U-turns are performed by a consistent minority of specialist U-turners that make frequent U-turns on trails and lay trail pheromones with high frequency. Our study shows a key role for U-turning ants in maintaining the connectivity of pheromone trails. We produced an agent-based model of a heterogeneous ant community where 7% of agents were specialised frequent U-turners whilst the remaining 93% rarely U-turned. Simulations showed that heterogeneous colonies enjoyed significantly greater success at foraging for distant food resources compared to behaviourally homogeneous colonies. The presence of a cohort of specialised trail-layers maintains a well-connected network of trails which ensures that food discoveries are rapidly linked back to the nest. This decentralised information transfer ensures that foragers can respond to dynamic changes in food distribution, meaning more individuals benefit by successfully locating food finds.
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Jackson, D.E., Bicak, M., Holcombe, M. (2009). Decentralised Communication and Connectivity in Ant Trail Networks. In: Krasnogor, N., Melián-Batista, M.B., Pérez, J.A.M., Moreno-Vega, J.M., Pelta, D.A. (eds) Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO 2008). Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 236. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03211-0_3
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