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Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule

Ant colonies regulate foraging in response to their collective hunger, yet the mechanism behind this distributed regulation remains unclear. Previously, by imaging food flow within ant colonies we showed that the frequency of foraging events declines linearly with colony satiation (Greenwald et al.,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Baltiansky, Lior, Frankel, Guy, Feinerman, Ofer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10110237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37067884
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.77659
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author Baltiansky, Lior
Frankel, Guy
Feinerman, Ofer
author_facet Baltiansky, Lior
Frankel, Guy
Feinerman, Ofer
author_sort Baltiansky, Lior
collection PubMed
description Ant colonies regulate foraging in response to their collective hunger, yet the mechanism behind this distributed regulation remains unclear. Previously, by imaging food flow within ant colonies we showed that the frequency of foraging events declines linearly with colony satiation (Greenwald et al., 2018). Our analysis implied that as a forager distributes food in the nest, two factors affect her decision to exit for another foraging trip: her current food load and its rate of change. Sensing these variables can be attributed to the forager’s individual cognitive ability. Here, new analyses of the foragers’ trajectories within the nest imply a different way to achieve the observed regulation. Instead of an explicit decision to exit, foragers merely tend toward the depth of the nest when their food load is high and toward the nest exit when it is low. Thus, the colony shapes the forager’s trajectory by controlling her unloading rate, while she senses only her current food load. Using an agent-based model and mathematical analysis, we show that this simple mechanism robustly yields emergent regulation of foraging frequency. These findings demonstrate how the embedding of individuals in physical space can reduce their cognitive demands without compromising their computational role in the group.
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spelling pubmed-101102372023-04-18 Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule Baltiansky, Lior Frankel, Guy Feinerman, Ofer eLife Computational and Systems Biology Ant colonies regulate foraging in response to their collective hunger, yet the mechanism behind this distributed regulation remains unclear. Previously, by imaging food flow within ant colonies we showed that the frequency of foraging events declines linearly with colony satiation (Greenwald et al., 2018). Our analysis implied that as a forager distributes food in the nest, two factors affect her decision to exit for another foraging trip: her current food load and its rate of change. Sensing these variables can be attributed to the forager’s individual cognitive ability. Here, new analyses of the foragers’ trajectories within the nest imply a different way to achieve the observed regulation. Instead of an explicit decision to exit, foragers merely tend toward the depth of the nest when their food load is high and toward the nest exit when it is low. Thus, the colony shapes the forager’s trajectory by controlling her unloading rate, while she senses only her current food load. Using an agent-based model and mathematical analysis, we show that this simple mechanism robustly yields emergent regulation of foraging frequency. These findings demonstrate how the embedding of individuals in physical space can reduce their cognitive demands without compromising their computational role in the group. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2023-04-17 /pmc/articles/PMC10110237/ /pubmed/37067884 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.77659 Text en © 2023, Baltiansky, Frankel et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Computational and Systems Biology
Baltiansky, Lior
Frankel, Guy
Feinerman, Ofer
Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
title Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
title_full Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
title_fullStr Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
title_full_unstemmed Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
title_short Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
title_sort emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule
topic Computational and Systems Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10110237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37067884
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.77659
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