Symmetry breaking on density in escaping ants: experiment and alarm pheromone model.

ABSTRACT: The symmetry breaking observed in nature is fascinating. This symmetry breaking is observed in both human crowds and ant colonies. In such cases, when escaping from a closed space with two symmetrically located exits, one exit is used more often than the other. Group size and density have been reported as having no significant impact on symmetry breaking, and the alignment rule has been used to model symmetry breaking. Density usually plays important roles in collective behavior. However, density is not well-studied in symmetry breaking, which forms the major basis of this paper. The experiment described in this paper on an ant colony displays an increase then decrease of symmetry breaking versus ant density. This result suggests that a Vicsek-like model with an alignment rule may not be t

SUBMITTER: Li G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4281238 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature