Natures wonders: ants explore for food efficiently (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 20, 2020, 00:25 (1407 days ago) @ David Turell

Each ant lays a pheromone trail for others to avoid:

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-ant-inspired-approach-mathematical-sampling.html

"In a paper published by the Journal of The Royal Society Interface, a team of Bristol researchers observed the exploratory behavior of ants to inform the development of a more efficient mathematical sampling technique.

"Animals like ants have the challenge of exploring their environment to look for food and potential places to live. With a large group of individuals, like an ant colony, a large amount of time would be wasted if the ants repeatedly explored the same empty areas.

"The interdisciplinary team from the University of Bristol's Faculties of Engineering and Life Sciences, predicted that the study species—the 'rock ant' - uses some form of chemical communication to avoid exploring the same space multiple times.

"Lead author Dr. Edmund Hunt said: "This would be a reversal of the Hansel and Gretel story—instead of following each other's trails, they would avoid them in order to explore collectively.

"'To test this theory, we conducted an experiment where we let ants explore an empty arena one by one. In the first condition, we cleaned the arena between each ant so they could not leave behind any trace of their path. In the second condition, we did not clean between ants. The ants in the second condition (no cleaning) made a better exploration of the arena—they covered more space.'"

Comment: in previous entries teh use of pheromones was noted for recognizing friends or enemies. This is another use of ant odors, no thought involved.