Flexible Foraging of Ants under Unsteadily Varying Environment

Abstract

Using a simple model for the trail formation of ants, the relation between i)the schedule of feeding which represents the unsteady natural environment, ii)emerging patterns of trails connecting a nest with food resources, and iii)the foraging efficiency is studied. Simulations and a simple analysis show that the emergent trail pattern flexibly varies depending on the feeding schedule by which ants can make an efficient foraging according to the underlying unsteady environment.

16pages, 11figures, use JPSJ macro

References in corpus (2)

• Cluster formation and anomalous fundamental diagram in an ant trail model
• Self-Assembling of Networks in an Agent-Based Model

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Trail formation based on directed pheromone deposition
• Counter Chemotactic Flow in Quasi-One-Dimensional Path
• Free energy of a chemotactic model with nonlinear diffusion