How Ant Colonies Get Things Done

Apr 2008


(66 min)

Dr. Deborah Gordon, the biological science professor, presents:

Ant colonies operate without central control; there is no one in charge and no ant directs the behavior of others.

Colonies perform many tasks including foraging, nest construction, and care of the young. Task allocation is the process that adjusts the numbers of workers performing each task, according to the current situation. How do colonies get ants to show up at a picnic, and what determines which ants go?

Experiments with harvester ants show that task allocation arises from a dynamical network of brief interactions. Which task an ant performs, and whether it performs it actively at that moment, depends on its recent rate of encounter with other ants. The dynamics of task allocation changes as colonies grow older and larger: larger colonies are more stable than younger, smaller ones, although since ant turnover is high, older colonies do not contain older ants.

Ant colony organization provides an interesting model for investigating network behavior and the function of network size.