Behavioural variation among workers promotes feed-forward loops in a simulated insect colony.

ABSTRACT: Coordinated responses in eusocial insect colonies arise from worker interaction networks that enable collective processing of ecologically relevant information. Previous studies have detected a structural motif in these networks known as the feed-forward loop, which functions to process information in other biological regulatory networks (e.g. transcriptional networks). However, the processes that generate feed-forward loops among workers and the consequences for information flow within the colony remain largely unexplored. We constructed an agent-based model to investigate how individual variation in activity and movement shaped the production of feed-forward loops in a simulated insect colony. We hypothesized that individual variation along these axes would generate feed-forward loops by

SUBMITTER: Easter C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8889185 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature