Spatiotemporal chemotactic model for ant foraging

Subramanian Ramakrishnan, Thomas Laurent, Manish Kumar, Andrea L. Bertozzi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we present a generic theoretical chemotactic model that accounts for certain emergent behaviors observed in ant foraging. The model does not have many of the constraints and limitations of existing models for ants colony dynamics and takes into account the distinctly different behaviors exhibited in nature by ant foragers in search of food and food ferrying ants. Numerical simulations based on the model show trail formation in foraging ant colonies to be an emergent phenomenon and, in particular, replicate behavior observed in experiments involving the species P. megacephala. The results have broader implications for the study of randomness in chemotactic models. Potential applications include the developments of novel algorithms for stochastic search in engineered complex systems such as robotic swarms.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number1450238
JournalModern Physics Letters B
Volume28
Issue number30
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 10 2014

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Keywords

  • Ant foraging
  • Chemotaxis
  • Complex systems
  • Keller-Segel model
  • Self-organization

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