Comparison of solitary and collective foraging strategies of <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i> in patchy food distributions.

ABSTRACT: Collective foraging has been shown to benefit organisms in environments where food is patchily distributed, but whether this is true in the case where organisms do not rely on long-range communications to coordinate their collective behaviour has been understudied. To address this question, we use the tractable laboratory model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, where a social strain (npr-1 mutant) and a solitary strain (N2) are available for direct comparison of foraging strategies. We first developed an on-lattice minimal model for comparing collective and solitary foraging strategies, finding that social agents benefit from feeding faster and more efficiently simply owing to group formation. Our laboratory foraging experiments with npr-1 and N2 worm populations, howev

SUBMITTER: Ding SS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7423371 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature