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Lessons for Teaching in Ants| old_uid | 6813 |
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| title | Lessons for Teaching in Ants |
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| start_date | 2009/04/28 |
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| schedule | 12h15 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Tandem runs are a form of recruitment in ants. During a tandem run, a
single leader teaches one follower the route to important resources such as
sources of food or better nest sites. Here, we investigate what tandem
leaders and followers do, in the context of nest emigration, if their
partner goes missing. Our experiments involved removing either leaders or
followers at set points during tandem runs. Former leaders first stand
still and wait for their missing follower but then most often proceed alone
to the new nest site. By contrast, former followers first use a Brownian
search and then engage in a Lévy-like search, such that the flight lengths
in their paths are characterized by power laws with many small flights and
far fewer much longer ones. The search paths of former followers tend to
begin with short flights and gradually proceed to longer ones. In this way,
former followers first search their immediate neighbourhood for their lost
leader before becoming ever more super-diffusive so that in the absence of
their former leader they can often find the new nest, re-encounter the old
one or meet a new leader. We also show that followers gain useful
information even from incomplete tandem runs. This points to the important
principle that sophisticated communication behaviours may have evolved as
anytime algorithms. |
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| responsibles | Rampon, Giurfa |
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