Nestmate recognition in social insects: overcoming physiological constraints with collective decision making.

ABSTRACT: Social insects rank among the most abundant and influential terrestrial organisms. The key to their success is their ability to form tightly knit social groups that perform work cooperatively, and effectively exclude non-members from the colony. An extensive body of research, both empirical and theoretical, has explored how optimal acceptance thresholds could evolve in individuals, driven by the twin costs of inappropriately rejecting true nestmates and erroneously accepting individuals from foreign colonies. Here, in contrast, we use agent-based modeling to show that strong nestmate recognition by individuals is often unnecessary. Instead, highly effective nestmate recognition can arise as a colony-level property from a collective of individually poor recognizers. Essentially, although an

SUBMITTER: Johnson BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3078317 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature