Response threshold reinforcements and division of labour in insect societies

Abstract

A model of division of labour in insect societies, based on variable response thresholds is introduced. Response thresholds refer to the likelihood of reacting to task-associated stimuli. Low-threshold individuals perform tasks at a lower level of stimulus than high-threshold individuals. Within individual workers, performing a given task induces a decrease in the corresponding threshold, and not performing the task induces an increase in the threshold. This combined reinforcement process leads to the emergence of specialized workers, i.e. workers that are more responsive to stimuli associated with particular task requirements, from a group of initially identical individuals. Predictions of the dynamics of task specialization resulting from this model are presented. Predictions are also made as to what should be observed when specialists of a given task are removed from the colony and reintroduced after a varying amount of time: the colony does not recover the same state as that prior to the perturbation, and the di¡erence between before and after the perturbation is more strongly marked as the time between separation and reintroduction increases.

Wasp-like Agents for Distributed Factory Coordination

“…Bonabeau, et al [7] discuss a model in which these thresholds remain fixed over time. Later they considered that a threshold for a given task decreases during time periods when that task is performed and increases otherwise [53]. Bonabeau et al [6] demonstrate how this model leads to a distributed system for allocating mail retrieval tasks to a group of mail carriers.…”

“…1 In this paper, we present a system for dynamically scheduling parallel multipurpose machines based on the natural multi-agent system of the wasp colony. A computational model of real wasp behavior [7,[52][53][54] lies at the foundation of our approach. In this model, interactions between individual wasps and the local environment (wasp-to-environment interactions) in the form of a stimulus-response mechanism govern distributed task allocation.…”

A self organizing social insect model for dynamic frequency allocation in cellular telephone networks

“…Every agent contains a 2-dimensional array of threshold values associated with each cell in the network. These thresholds [2], [5] and [1] help agents determine whether they will respond to the demand for frequencies from the corresponding cell. If the intensity of a stimulus is at or above the threshold of a specific agent, then that agent will respond to the stimulus by changing to an "In Transit" state and moving towards the demanding cell.…”

“…In order to facilitate the division of labor, the mobile agents are capable of a simple form of learning [1], [2] and [5]. Initially each agent is given the same mean threshold value for every cell in the network.…”

“…It can therefore be said that an agent "forgets" cells that it has not recently worked in. This concept of division of labor is used in tandem with an adaptive task allocation system [5], [2] to manage the agents in such a way that the global demand in the network is kept as low as possible (see Equations 2, 3, and 4).…”