Division of labour in ant colonies in terms of attractive fields

Arcaute, Elsa; Christensen, Kim; Sendova-Franks, Ana B.; Dahl, Torbj�rn; Espinosa, Angela; Jensen, Henrik J.

Abstract

In nature there exist many mechanisms giving rise to self-regulation. One such mechanism is the division of labour in insect societies. Within this work we propose a mathematical model for the allocation of tasks in ant colonies, where each of the tasks is represented by an attractive field. This can be seen as a stimulus, whose strength is inversely proportional to the distance to the task. The dynamics leading to the division of labour is therefore driven by the spatial distance of the ants to the source of information encoding the task. Assuming homogeneity among the ants, specialisation and adaptability are obtained through the introduction of learning and forgetting. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2009
• Journal: Ecological Complexity
• Print ISSN: 1476-945X
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 396-402
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.10.001
• Keywords: division of labour, ant colonies, specialisation, stimuli
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1000545
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.10.001