2012
DOI: 10.4161/cib.21421
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Abstract: To survive floods, fire ants link their bodies together to build waterproof rafts. Such rafts can be quite large, exceeding 100,000 individuals in size. In this study, we make two improvements on a previously reported model on the construction rate of rafts numbering between 3,000 and 10,000 individuals. That model was based upon experimental observations of randomly-directed linear ant trajectories atop the raft. Here, we report anomalous behavior of ants atop larger rafts of up to 23,000 ants. As rafts incre… Show more

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Cited by 21 publications
(31 citation statements)
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“…When the number of workers reaches a certain threshold, workers would position themselves more randomly, ensuring a quick growth of the raft. In line with this argument, the behaviour of fire ant workers changed from linear to diffusive motion when the raft size increased (Mlot et al 2012). In addition, an effect of group size on task specialization has been documented in multiple contexts.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 60%
“…When the number of workers reaches a certain threshold, workers would position themselves more randomly, ensuring a quick growth of the raft. In line with this argument, the behaviour of fire ant workers changed from linear to diffusive motion when the raft size increased (Mlot et al 2012). In addition, an effect of group size on task specialization has been documented in multiple contexts.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 60%
“…As we are not considering eects of stability, we will ignore rule (iv) in the present study. We simulate the rules (i)-(iii) from Mlot et al [2012] and Phonekeo et al [2017] with a naive approach to what constitutes an available space adjacent to non-moving agents, assuming no direct knowledge of the agents about where they are relative to the rest of the tower. At each time step, each individual agent randomly chooses an adjacent square to move into, performing a random walk and fullling rule (ii).…”
Section: Diusion-limited Aggregationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In nature, red imported re ant (Solenopsis invicta) towers tend to occur in the event of ooding. Initially, re ants gather together to form hydrophobic rafts [Mlot et al, 2011[Mlot et al, , 2012 to oat above the water surface.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In nature, red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) towers tend to occur in the event of flooding. Initially, fire ants gather together to form hydrophobic rafts (Mlot et al, 2011(Mlot et al, , 2012 to float above the water surface. When the rafts approach vegetation emerging from the surface, they may attach to the vegetation and form towers on top of their floating rafts, as pictured in Figure 1A.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%