Socially driven negative feedback regulates activity and energy use in ant colonies.

ABSTRACT: Despite almost a century of research on energetics in biological systems, we still cannot explain energy regulation in social groups, like ant colonies. How do individuals regulate their collective activity without a centralized control system? What is the role of social interactions in distributing the workload amongst group members? And how does the group save energy by avoiding being constantly active? We offer new insight into these questions by studying an intuitive compartmental model, calibrated with and compared to data on ant colonies. The model describes a previously unexplored balance between positive and negative social feedback driven by individual activity: when activity levels are low, the presence of active individuals stimulates inactive individuals to start working; when

SUBMITTER: Porfiri M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11649087 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature