Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule.

ABSTRACT: Ant colonies regulate foraging in response to their collective hunger, yet the mechanism behind this distributed regulation remains unclear. Previously, by imaging food flow within ant colonies we showed that the frequency of foraging events declines linearly with colony satiation (Greenwald et al., 2018). Our analysis implied that as a forager distributes food in the nest, two factors affect her decision to exit for another foraging trip: her current food load and its rate of change. Sensing these variables can be attributed to the forager's individual cognitive ability. Here, new analyses of the foragers' trajectories within the nest imply a different way to achieve the observed regulation. Instead of an explicit decision to exit, foragers merely tend toward the depth of the nest when th

SUBMITTER: Baltiansky L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10110237 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature