The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.

Social insect colonies are complex systems in which the interactions of many individuals lead to colony-level collective behaviors such as foraging. However, the emergent properties of collective behaviors may not necessarily be adaptive. Here, we examine symmetry breaking, an emergent pattern exhib...

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Autores principales:	Michele C Lanan, Anna Dornhaus, Emily I Jones, Andrew Waser, Judith L Bronstein
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2012
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/cbf3301e5b02471b9d397e62acd42bed
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:cbf3301e5b02471b9d397e62acd42bed2021-11-18T08:11:07ZThe trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0047976https://doaj.org/article/cbf3301e5b02471b9d397e62acd42bed2012-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/23112880/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Social insect colonies are complex systems in which the interactions of many individuals lead to colony-level collective behaviors such as foraging. However, the emergent properties of collective behaviors may not necessarily be adaptive. Here, we examine symmetry breaking, an emergent pattern exhibited by some social insects that can lead colonies to focus their foraging effort on only one of several available food patches. Symmetry breaking has been reported to occur in several ant species. However, it is not clear whether it arises as an unavoidable epiphenomenon of pheromone recruitment, or whether it is an adaptive behavior that can be controlled through modification of the individual behavior of workers. In this paper, we used a simulation model to test how symmetry breaking is affected by the degree of non-linearity of recruitment, the specific mechanism used by individuals to choose between patches, patch size, and forager number. The model shows that foraging intensity on different trails becomes increasingly asymmetric as the recruitment response of individuals varies from linear to highly non-linear, supporting the predictions of previous work. Surprisingly, we also found that the direction of the relationship between forager number (i.e., colony size) and asymmetry varied depending on the specific details of the decision rule used by individuals. Limiting the size of the resource produced a damping effect on asymmetry, but only at high forager numbers. Variation in the rule used by individual ants to choose trails is a likely mechanism that could cause variation among the foraging behaviors of species, and is a behavior upon which selection could act.Michele C LananAnna DornhausEmily I JonesAndrew WaserJudith L BronsteinPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 7, Iss 10, p e47976 (2012)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Michele C Lanan Anna Dornhaus Emily I Jones Andrew Waser Judith L Bronstein The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
description	Social insect colonies are complex systems in which the interactions of many individuals lead to colony-level collective behaviors such as foraging. However, the emergent properties of collective behaviors may not necessarily be adaptive. Here, we examine symmetry breaking, an emergent pattern exhibited by some social insects that can lead colonies to focus their foraging effort on only one of several available food patches. Symmetry breaking has been reported to occur in several ant species. However, it is not clear whether it arises as an unavoidable epiphenomenon of pheromone recruitment, or whether it is an adaptive behavior that can be controlled through modification of the individual behavior of workers. In this paper, we used a simulation model to test how symmetry breaking is affected by the degree of non-linearity of recruitment, the specific mechanism used by individuals to choose between patches, patch size, and forager number. The model shows that foraging intensity on different trails becomes increasingly asymmetric as the recruitment response of individuals varies from linear to highly non-linear, supporting the predictions of previous work. Surprisingly, we also found that the direction of the relationship between forager number (i.e., colony size) and asymmetry varied depending on the specific details of the decision rule used by individuals. Limiting the size of the resource produced a damping effect on asymmetry, but only at high forager numbers. Variation in the rule used by individual ants to choose trails is a likely mechanism that could cause variation among the foraging behaviors of species, and is a behavior upon which selection could act.
format	article
author	Michele C Lanan Anna Dornhaus Emily I Jones Andrew Waser Judith L Bronstein
author_facet	Michele C Lanan Anna Dornhaus Emily I Jones Andrew Waser Judith L Bronstein
author_sort	Michele C Lanan
title	The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
title_short	The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
title_full	The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
title_fullStr	The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
title_full_unstemmed	The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
title_sort	trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2012
url	https://doaj.org/article/cbf3301e5b02471b9d397e62acd42bed
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The trail less traveled: individual decision-making and its effect on group behavior.

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