The digging dynamics of ant tunnels: movement, encounters, and nest space

Bruce, A; Pérez‐Escudero, Alfonso; Czaczkes, Tomer J.; Burd, Martin

doi:10.1007/s00040-018-0657-0

Cited by 3 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Bruce et al . [45] empirically model the excavation rate as a power-law which predicts a t − 2 decay in rate over time, which is also inconsistent with our observations. Neither of these previous models is derived from explicit behavioural rules, though Bruce et al .…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 97%

“…We propose that the ants are willing to delay rest when excavating a fresh system of tunnels, until they detect the tunnels are large enough, at which point they revert to a nominal behaviour pattern. Such a mechanism implies that the insects become agitated without shelter, and relax into nominal behaviour when sheltered, consistent with the concept of ‘arousal’ described before [45].…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

“…Previous studies of ant excavation reported similar trends [44,45,59], where the excavation rate started high or peaked, and then decreased slowly over time. Buhl et al .…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 53%

“…The goal of this study was to understand the dynamics of excavation behaviour by collectives of ants as model social insects which regularly confront crowded traffic conditions in a confined space. We performed ant excavation experiments in a quasi-two-dimensional system and observed a pattern of excavation-rate modulation [44,45,60]. Our experimental excavation rate trend reveals signs of regulation across timescales, including a high and constant initial rate, a fast decay, and a slow decay at long timescales (figure 7).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our model captures the experimental excavation rate trend very well across timescales, and suggests ants modulate their participation in excavation based on their recent history of collisions. Crucially, this modulation, which we refer to as an ‘agitation override’, addresses observed effects of both initial tunnel length and ant group size, and serves as a mechanistic description of the concept of ‘arousal’ which is referred to in [45].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agitated ants: regulation and self-organization of incipient nest excavation via collisional cues

Avinery

Aina

Dyson

et al. 2023

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Ants are millimetres in scale yet collectively create metre-scale nests in diverse substrates. To discover principles by which ant collectives self-organize to excavate crowded, narrow tunnels, we studied incipient excavation in small groups of fire ants in quasi-two-dimensional arenas. Excavation rates displayed three stages: initially excavation occurred at a constant rate, followed by a rapid decay, and finally a slower decay scaling in time as t −1/2 . We used a cellular automata model to understand such scaling and motivate how rate modulation emerges without global control. In the model, ants estimated their collision frequency with other ants, but otherwise did not communicate. To capture early excavation rates, we introduced the concept of ‘agitation’—a tendency of individuals to avoid rest if collisions are frequent. The model reproduced the observed multi-stage excavation dynamics; analysis revealed how parameters affected features of multi-stage progression. Moreover, a scaling argument without ant–ant interactions captures tunnel growth power-law at long times. Our study demonstrates how individual ants may use local collisional cues to achieve functional global self-organization. Such contact-based decisions could be leveraged by other living and non-living collectives to perform tasks in confined and crowded environments.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 97%

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

“…Previous studies of ant excavation reported similar trends [44,45,59], where the excavation rate started high or peaked, and then decreased slowly over time. Buhl et al .…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 53%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Agitated ants: regulation and self-organization of incipient nest excavation via collisional cues

Avinery

Aina

Dyson

et al. 2023

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Toward Task Capable Active Matter: Learning to Avoid Clogging in Confined Collectives via Collisions

et al. 2022

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Social organisms which construct nests consisting of tunnels and chambers necessarily navigate confined and crowded conditions. Unlike low density collectives like bird flocks and insect swarms in which hydrodynamic and statistical phenomena dominate, the physics of glasses and supercooled fluids is important to understand clogging behaviors in high density collectives. Our previous work revealed that fire ants flowing in confined tunnels utilize diverse behaviors like unequal workload distributions, spontaneous direction reversals and limited interaction times to mitigate clogging and jamming and thus maintain functional flow; implementation of similar rules in a small robophysical swarm led to high performance through spontaneous dissolution of clogs and clusters. However, how the insects learn such behaviors and how we can develop “task capable” active matter in such regimes remains a challenge in part because interaction dynamics are dominated by local, potentially time-consuming collisions and no single agent can survey and guide the entire collective. Here, hypothesizing that effective flow and clog mitigation could be generated purely by collisional learning dynamics, we challenged small groups of robots to transport pellets through a narrow tunnel, and allowed them to modify their excavation probabilities over time. Robots began excavation with equal probabilities to excavate and without probability modification, clogs and clusters were common. Allowing the robots to perform a “reversal” and exit the tunnel when they encountered another robot which prevented forward progress improved performance. When robots were allowed to change their reversal probabilities via both a collision and a self-measured (and noisy) estimate of tunnel length, unequal workload distributions comparable to our previous work emerged and excavation performance improved. Our robophysical study of an excavating swarm shows that despite the seeming complexity and difficulty of the task, simple learning rules can mitigate or leverage unavoidable features in task capable dense active matter, leading to hypotheses for dense biological and robotic swarms.

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The Smallest “Miner” of the Animal Kingdom and Its Importance for Raw Materials Exploitation

Xiroudakis,

Saratsis,

Manoutsoglou

2024

Mining

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The mining industry is the leading supplier of raw materials in modern society. This sector of human activity has experienced a severe crisis due to the energy transition and has been revived in recent years due to the need for critical metals that are essential in the post-coal era. In underground and open pit mining, processes such as extraction, transportation, safety, underground ventilation, waste management, and rehabilitation are of major importance, and their “design” is critical to the economic survival of the mine. All the above processes required to operate a mine are strongly reminiscent of an example of nature’s workman: the ant. The sympatric insect uses the same processes as the ones aforementioned during the creation of its nest. The ants dig to “extract material from the ground”, and they transport this material from the nest‘s site to the waste deposition location. The ants ensure the safety of the underground opening and the proper ventilation needed for them to live there for a long time. This article attempts to identify the relations between all the above processes and sub-processes, and how human mining and ant colony development correlate with each other. Furthermore, we examine how an ant colony has aided in the development of mining technology, and what more humans can learn and adopt from a “miner” that is 66 million years old, in order to improve their processes.

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The digging dynamics of ant tunnels: movement, encounters, and nest space

Cited by 3 publications

References 40 publications

Agitated ants: regulation and self-organization of incipient nest excavation via collisional cues

Agitated ants: regulation and self-organization of incipient nest excavation via collisional cues

Toward Task Capable Active Matter: Learning to Avoid Clogging in Confined Collectives via Collisions

The Smallest “Miner” of the Animal Kingdom and Its Importance for Raw Materials Exploitation

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