Quorum sensing, recruitment, and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis

Pratt, Stephen C.; Mallon, Eamonn B.; Sumpter, David J. T.; Franks, Nigel R.

doi:10.1007/s00265-002-0487-x

Cited by 393 publications

(420 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Camazine et al 1999;Seeley & Buhrman 1999;Mallon et al 2001;Britton et al 2002;Pratt et al 2002;Couzin & Franks 2003;Franks et al 2003;Seeley 2003;Dornhaus et al 2004;Seeley & Visscher 2004;Pratt 2005) and, therefore, much more is known about the mechanisms behind consensus decisions in eusocial insect colonies than in vertebrate groups. Two particularly well studied and elegant examples involve nest site choice in swarming honeybees, A. mellifera, and the ant, L. albipennis.…”

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confidence: 99%

Consensus decision making in human crowds

Dyer¹,

Ioannou²,

Morrell³

et al. 2008

Animal Behaviour

163

114

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In groups of animals only a small proportion of individuals may possess particular information, such as a migration route or the direction to a resource. Individuals may differ in preferred direction resulting in conflicts of interest and, therefore, consensus decisions may have to be made to prevent the group from splitting. Recent theoretical work has shown how leadership and consensus decision making can occur without active signalling or individual recognition. Here we test these predictions experimentally using humans. We found that a small informed minority could guide a group of na€ ıve individuals to a target without verbal communication or obvious signalling. Both the time to target and deviation from target were decreased by the presence of informed individuals. When conflicting directional information was given to different group members, the time taken to reach the target was not significantly increased; suggesting that consensus decision making in conflict situations is possible, and highly efficient. Where there was imbalance in the number of informed individuals with conflicting information, the majority dictated group direction. Our results also suggest that the spatial starting position of informed individuals influences group motion, which has implications in terms of crowd control and planning for evacuations.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Consensus decision making in human crowds

Dyer¹,

Ioannou²,

Morrell³

et al. 2008

Animal Behaviour

163

114

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“…Earlier work by Pratt et al [27,38] demonstrated that workers introduced to, or removed from, a new nest site by hand directly influenced other ants' assessments of whether a quorum threshold had been achieved. Thus, individual nest visit durations that are positively associated with overall nest quality, as demonstrated here, may influence quorum attainment at the collective level, both directly via worker presence and indirectly via recruitment decisions, favouring the choice of the highest quality nest site available.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been hypothesized that such a trend exists, as by spending longer within a nest, workers may better contribute to a quorum threshold prior to recruiting [24,26,27]. Specifically, experiments have shown-simply by introducing workers to a new nest site by hand-that ants within a new nest will contribute to a quorum [27]. Moreover, while recruitment is the principal method of nest choice, in certain minority cases, when the current nest is destroyed and new nests are nearby, colonies are also able to choose nests without recruiting to them, instead relying on independent worker discoveries to build up a quorum within [24,28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variability in individual assessment behaviour and its implications for collective decision-making

et al. 2017

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Self-organized systems of collective behaviour have been demonstrated in a number of group-living organisms. There is, however, less research relating to how variation in individual assessments may facilitate group decision-making. Here, we investigate this using the decentralized system of collective nest choice behaviour employed by the ant Temnothorax albipennis, combining experimental results with computational modelling. In experiments, isolated workers of this species were allowed to investigate new nest sites of differing quality, and it was found that for any given nest quality, there was wide variation among individuals in the durations that they spent within each nest site. Additionally, individual workers were consistent in spending more time in nest sites of higher quality, and less time in those of lower quality. Hence, the time spent in a new nest site must have included an assessment of nest quality. As nest site visit durations (henceforth termed assessment durations) are linked to recruitment, it is possible that the variability we observed may influence the collective decision-making process of colonies. Thus, we explored this further using a computational model of nest site selection, and found that heterogeneous nest assessments conferred a number of potential benefits. Furthermore, our experiments showed that nest quality assessments were flexible, being influenced by experience of prior options. Our findings help to elucidate the potential mechanisms underlying group behaviour, and highlight the importance of heterogeneity among individuals, rather than precise calibration, in shaping collective decision-making.

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“…Instead, they transport brood, queen, other workers to the chosen site. Transported workers do not learn the route between the home nest and the new nest, so are unable to return home, and thus cannot challenge the decision that has been implemented [32]. Transported ants therefore contribute strongly to the quorum by staying in the new nest, so once a few scouts have entered a 'post-quorum' state and started transporting, others quickly follow suit.…”

Section: Collective Decision-making In House Hunting Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This assessment and recruitment process is terminated when scouts sense that a nest site has reached quorum. Scouts then move into a 'post-quorum' behavioural state [32]: they stop leading other scouts by tandem-running, and are no longer willing to be recruited by tandem-running themselves. Instead, they transport brood, queen, other workers to the chosen site.…”

Section: Collective Decision-making In House Hunting Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational Collective Intelligence

Araújo

Treur

2016

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Abstract. Population based decision mechanisms employed by many Swarm Intelligence methods can suffer poor convergence resulting in ill-defined halting criteria and loss of the best solution. Conversely, as a result of its resource allocation mechanism, the solutions found by Stochastic Diffusion Search enjoy excellent stability. Previous implementations of SDS have deployed complex stopping criteria derived from global properties of the agent population; this paper examines two new local SDS halting criteria and compares their performance with 'quorum sensing' -a natural termination criterion deployed in nature by some species of tandem-running ants. We empirically demonstrate that local termination criteria are almost as robust as the classical SDS termination criteria, whilst the average time taken to reach a decision is around three times faster.

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Quorum sensing, recruitment, and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis

Cited by 393 publications

References 34 publications

Consensus decision making in human crowds

Consensus decision making in human crowds

Variability in individual assessment behaviour and its implications for collective decision-making

Computational Collective Intelligence

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