The Role of Information Acquisition and Processing in Decision‐Making by Individual within Insects Colonies

Abstract

Insects usually present simple behaviours, but their information processing abilities result in complex collective behaviours, allowing them to perform task allocation and solve difficult problems. Biologists have invested efforts to better understand the mechanisms that govern the behaviour of social insects at the individual level and that allow the emergence of complex behaviours at the colony level. Based on biological researches, we identify the main mechanisms used to acquire different types of information and how this information is processed and used in decision‐making. We present Information Acquisition as an essential stage for Information Processing, focusing on external and internal information sources and exploring examples of information processing performed by insects. A better understanding of information processing and collective behavior in nature is the basis for the understanding of how computing is realized in insect societies, as well for new insights to develop more effective computational approaches inspired by social insects. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dynamic pathogen detection and social feedback shape collective hygiene in ants

“…Own pathogen load seems to be assessed by the ants indirectly, requiring social feedback by others in the form of received grooming – which must be targeted preferentially towards the infectious ants for this mechanism to work. Finally, we found that the ants become more reactive to socially-acquired information when they also individually acquire information on their own disturbance, reiterating the relevance of combined internal and external information integration in social insects 55 , 56 .…”