↓ Skip to main content

PLOS

The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information

Overview of attention for article published in PLoS Computational Biology, August 2012
Altmetric Badge

Mentioned by

news
3 news outlets
blogs
6 blogs
twitter
36 X users
facebook
4 Facebook pages
wikipedia
3 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
9 Google+ users
linkedin
1 LinkedIn user
reddit
1 Redditor
pinterest
1 Pinner
video
1 YouTube creator

Readers on

mendeley
267 Mendeley
citeulike
7 CiteULike
Title
The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information
Published in
PLoS Computational Biology, August 2012
DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002670
Pubmed ID
Authors

Balaji Prabhakar, Katherine N. Dektar, Deborah M. Gordon

Abstract

Many dynamical networks, such as the ones that produce the collective behavior of social insects, operate without any central control, instead arising from local interactions among individuals. A well-studied example is the formation of recruitment trails in ant colonies, but many ant species do not use pheromone trails. We present a model of the regulation of foraging by harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) colonies. This species forages for scattered seeds that one ant can retrieve on its own, so there is no need for spatial information such as pheromone trails that lead ants to specific locations. Previous work shows that colony foraging activity, the rate at which ants go out to search individually for seeds, is regulated in response to current food availability throughout the colony's foraging area. Ants use the rate of brief antennal contacts inside the nest between foragers returning with food and outgoing foragers available to leave the nest on the next foraging trip. Here we present a feedback-based algorithm that captures the main features of data from field experiments in which the rate of returning foragers was manipulated. The algorithm draws on our finding that the distribution of intervals between successive ants returning to the nest is a Poisson process. We fitted the parameter that estimates the effect of each returning forager on the rate at which outgoing foragers leave the nest. We found that correlations between observed rates of returning foragers and simulated rates of outgoing foragers, using our model, were similar to those in the data. Our simple stochastic model shows how the regulation of ant colony foraging can operate without spatial information, describing a process at the level of individual ants that predicts the overall foraging activity of the colony.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 36 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 267 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 13 5%
France 2 <1%
Germany 2 <1%
Portugal 2 <1%
Brazil 2 <1%
Canada 2 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Italy 1 <1%
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Other 6 2%
Unknown 235 88%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 69 26%
Researcher 49 18%
Student > Master 31 12%
Student > Bachelor 30 11%
Professor > Associate Professor 16 6%
Other 39 15%
Unknown 33 12%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 105 39%
Computer Science 34 13%
Physics and Astronomy 15 6%
Engineering 13 5%
Environmental Science 8 3%
Other 49 18%
Unknown 43 16%