In a study, a research team looked at when and how ant colonies vacated their nests when the temperature turned very high.
At some point, a ScienceAlert report specified, a decision was estimated by the "collective, concluding the nest should be abandoned.
Essentially, ant colonies can act akin to neural networks, as revealed in the new research, with groups of insects weighing up both external inputs and internal principles when making decisions on what to do with them collectively.
To put it differently, the ants acted as an entire system in the same manner that neutrons are taking action as a whole brain, with everything working in unison. It is the classic paradigm of advantages continuing to work against costs overheating and losing colony members.
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Two European red wood ants (Formica polyctena) are pictured in a forest near Birkenwerder, northeastern Germany.
Nest Vacated When the Temperature Went High
According to Daniel Kronauer, heading up the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at Rockefeller University in New York, their team pioneered a technique to understand the colony of ants as a cognitive-like system, perceiving inputs and then translating them into behavioral results.
He added that this is one of the initial steps toward understanding how insect societies engage in collective computation.
The investigational setup involved a temperature-regulated nest, a tracking camera, and ants marked with dots.
The study investigators noted, too, that with colony sizes of more than 60 working ants and nearly 20 larvae, the nest was vacated when the temperature reached approximately 34 degrees Celsius.
What Forces the Ants' Evacuation?
Nonetheless, as the colony's size increased, so did the temperature threshold that would force them to evacuate; with colonies of 200 ants, the tiny creatures stuck around until the heat level rose beyond 36 degrees Celsius.
It is believed that excitatory and inhibitory factors can be in contest among the ants, much as in a neural network.
Through mathematical modeling used in the study published in the PNAS journal, the team demonstrated how the collective sensory response threshold of the ants was based on the balance between the said two factors, not only the individual preference of every ant averaged out.
Kronauer explained, that it appears that the threshold is not fixed. Rather, it is an emergent property that changes according to the group size.
Chemical Messengers
What's unclear from the research is the reason the size of the group affects how keen the ants are to evacuate as the temperature rises.
Furthermore, the individual ants themselves would not have known the group size; something else is happening. One hypothesis of the study authors is that the phenomenon, also known as chemical messengers that pass between the ants, is scaling up their impacts where more ants are involved.
One more consideration might be that moving a bigger ant group is more of a challenge; thus, the benefits against the calculator of costs are changing.
To Reverse the System to Conclude the Ant's Inner Workings
According to a similar Tech Xplore report, this new research offers a solid, measurable framework for observing ants "at the collective level."
In future studies, more parameters could be added and then controlled to understand such collective decision-making better.
Kronauer said, what they have been able to do thus far is to disturb the system and gauge the output accurately.
In the long run, he added, the notion is to reverse engineer the system to conclude its inner workings more detailedly.
Related information about ant colonies is shown on Ral Science's YouTube video below:
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