Exploration versus exploitation in polydomous ant colonies

Cook, Zoe; Franks, Daniel W.; Robinson, Elva J. H.

doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2013.01.022

Cited by 35 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Mechanisms similar to those implied by our results have been used in theoretical models of polydomy (Schmolke 2009; Cook et al 2013). In these models, workers are loyal to a particular nest and treat other nests of the colony as food sources.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…However, the mechanism by which the polydomous system functions, and the benefits it provides the colony, remain poorly understood (Debout et al 2007). Polydomy has the potential to have a profound effect on how a colony relates to the environment (Debout et al 2007; Van Wilgenburg and Elgar 2007; Cook et al 2013; Ellis and Robinson 2014). Being distributed through the environment allows a colony to exploit resources, such as food and sunlight, over a larger area.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Resource redistribution in polydomous ant nest networks: local or global?

2014

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resource redistribution in polydomous ant nest networks: local or global?

2014

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“…Many aspects of life can be seen as search for rewarding outcomes [1,2]. Animals forage for food or mates [3,4], people search for information in the Internet or for a smart move during a chess game [5], and organisations search for new market opportunities [6]. Search involves at least two main components: 1) sampling solutions by exploring the environment, and 2) collecting rewards by exploiting the discovered solutions [1,2,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search as a simple take-the-best heuristic

Yahosseini

Moussaïd

2019

Preprint

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Humans commonly engage in a variety of search behaviours, for example when looking for an object, a partner, information, or a solution to a complex problem. The success or failure of a search strategy crucially depends on the structure of the environment and the constraints it imposes on the individuals. Here we focus on environments in which individuals have to explore the solution space gradually and where their reward is determined by one unique solution they choose to exploit. This type of environment has been relatively overlooked in the past despite being relevant to numerous real-life situations, such as spatial search and various problem-solving tasks. By means of a dedicated experimental design, we show that the search behaviour of experimental participants can be well described by a simple heuristic model. Both in rich and poor solution spaces, a takethe-best procedure that ignores all but one cue at a time is capable of reproducing a diversity of observed behavioural patterns. Our approach, therefore, sheds lights on the possible cognitive mechanisms involved in human search.

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“…Dispersed centralplace foraging is believed to enhance foraging through a variety of mechanisms. First, it is expected to reduce food search costs by increasing the total searched area while decreasing the overlap between foragers' search paths [5,6,[25][26][27][28][29][30]. Second, dispersed central-place foraging should decrease food transport costs by reducing the average distance between food sources and the nearest nest entrance [6,23,24,28,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The influence of polydomy on task allocation has never been formally investigated. Similarly, most support for the foraging benefits of dispersed central-place foraging derives from models [25,27,34] and observations that polydomous colonies establish new nests near stable food sources [22][23][24]33,36,[38][39][40]. Few studies have attempted to quantify the foraging efficiency of polydomous ant colonies [5,6,24,26,38,45], and even fewer used experimental manipulations to evaluate the effect of nest number on foraging efficiency [5,45].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polydomy enhances foraging performance in ant colonies

2017

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Collective foraging confers benefits in terms of reduced predation risk and access to social information, but it heightens local competition when resources are limited. In social insects, resource limitation has been suggested as a possible cause for the typical decrease in per capita productivity observed with increasing colony size, a phenomenon known as Michener's paradox. Polydomy (distribution of a colony's brood and workers across multiple nests) is believed to help circumvent this paradox through its positive effect on foraging efficiency, but there is still little supporting evidence for this hypothesis. Here, we show experimentally that polydomy enhances the foraging performance of food-deprived Temnothorax nylanderi ant colonies via several mechanisms. First, polydomy influences task allocation within colonies, resulting in faster retrieval of protein resources. Second, communication between sister nests reduces search times for far away resources. Third, colonies move queens, brood and workers across available nest sites in response to spatial heterogeneities in protein and carbohydrate resources. This suggests that polydomy represents a flexible mechanism for space occupancy, helping ant colonies adjust to the environment.

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Exploration versus exploitation in polydomous ant colonies

Cited by 35 publications

References 48 publications

Resource redistribution in polydomous ant nest networks: local or global?

Resource redistribution in polydomous ant nest networks: local or global?

Search as a simple take-the-best heuristic

Polydomy enhances foraging performance in ant colonies

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