Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.

Creating a routing backbone is a fundamental problem in both biology and engineering. The routing backbone of the trail networks of arboreal turtle ants (Cephalotes goniodontus) connects many nests and food sources using trail pheromone deposited by ants as they walk. Unlike species that forage on t...

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Autores principales:	Arjun Chandrasekhar, James A R Marshall, Cortnea Austin, Saket Navlakha, Deborah M Gordon
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Biology (General) QH301-705.5
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/d6befa3e9de34861b9a8ac861e073677
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:d6befa3e9de34861b9a8ac861e0736772021-12-02T19:57:28ZBetter tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.1553-734X1553-735810.1371/journal.pcbi.1009523https://doaj.org/article/d6befa3e9de34861b9a8ac861e0736772021-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009523https://doaj.org/toc/1553-734Xhttps://doaj.org/toc/1553-7358Creating a routing backbone is a fundamental problem in both biology and engineering. The routing backbone of the trail networks of arboreal turtle ants (Cephalotes goniodontus) connects many nests and food sources using trail pheromone deposited by ants as they walk. Unlike species that forage on the ground, the trail networks of arboreal ants are constrained by the vegetation. We examined what objectives the trail networks meet by comparing the observed ant trail networks with networks of random, hypothetical trail networks in the same surrounding vegetation and with trails optimized for four objectives: minimizing path length, minimizing average edge length, minimizing number of nodes, and minimizing opportunities to get lost. The ants' trails minimized path length by minimizing the number of nodes traversed rather than choosing short edges. In addition, the ants' trails reduced the opportunity for ants to get lost at each node, favoring nodes with 3D configurations most likely to be reinforced by pheromone. Thus, rather than finding the shortest edges, turtle ant trail networks take advantage of natural variation in the environment to favor coherence, keeping the ants together on the trails.Arjun ChandrasekharJames A R MarshallCortnea AustinSaket NavlakhaDeborah M GordonPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleBiology (General)QH301-705.5ENPLoS Computational Biology, Vol 17, Iss 10, p e1009523 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Biology (General) QH301-705.5
spellingShingle	Biology (General) QH301-705.5 Arjun Chandrasekhar James A R Marshall Cortnea Austin Saket Navlakha Deborah M Gordon Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
description	Creating a routing backbone is a fundamental problem in both biology and engineering. The routing backbone of the trail networks of arboreal turtle ants (Cephalotes goniodontus) connects many nests and food sources using trail pheromone deposited by ants as they walk. Unlike species that forage on the ground, the trail networks of arboreal ants are constrained by the vegetation. We examined what objectives the trail networks meet by comparing the observed ant trail networks with networks of random, hypothetical trail networks in the same surrounding vegetation and with trails optimized for four objectives: minimizing path length, minimizing average edge length, minimizing number of nodes, and minimizing opportunities to get lost. The ants' trails minimized path length by minimizing the number of nodes traversed rather than choosing short edges. In addition, the ants' trails reduced the opportunity for ants to get lost at each node, favoring nodes with 3D configurations most likely to be reinforced by pheromone. Thus, rather than finding the shortest edges, turtle ant trail networks take advantage of natural variation in the environment to favor coherence, keeping the ants together on the trails.
format	article
author	Arjun Chandrasekhar James A R Marshall Cortnea Austin Saket Navlakha Deborah M Gordon
author_facet	Arjun Chandrasekhar James A R Marshall Cortnea Austin Saket Navlakha Deborah M Gordon
author_sort	Arjun Chandrasekhar
title	Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
title_short	Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
title_full	Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
title_fullStr	Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
title_full_unstemmed	Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
title_sort	better tired than lost: turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/d6befa3e9de34861b9a8ac861e073677
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Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges.

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