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Animals · Animal ethology · Comparative psychology · Animal models · Outline · Index
Ants are simple animals and their behavioural repertory is limited to somewhere between ten and forty elementary behaviours. This is an attempt to explain the different patterns of self-organization in ants.[1]
Bifurcation[]
This is an instant transition of the whole system to a new stable pattern when a threshold is reached. Bifurcation is also known as multi-stability in which many stable states are possible.[2]
Examples of pattern types:
- Transition between disordered and ordered pattern
- Transition from an even use of many food sources to one source.
- Formation of branched nest galleries.
- Group preference of one exit by escaping ants.
- Chain formation of mutual leg grasping.
Synchronization[]
Oscillating patterns of activity in which individuals at different activity levels stimulate one another emerging from mutual activation.[2]
Examples of pattern types:
- Short scale rhythms arising from mechanical activation from physical contact.
- Long scale rhythms in which temporal changes in food needs and larvae stimulate changes in the reproductive cycle.
Self organized waves[]
Traveling waves of chemical concentration or mechanical deformation.[2]
Examples of pattern types:
- Alarm waves propagated by physical contact.
- Rotating trails from spatial changes in food resources acting on trail laying activity.
Self-organized criticality[]
Self-organized criticality is an abrupt disturbance in a system resulting from a build up of events without external stimuli.[2]
Examples of pattern types:
- Abrupt changes in feeding activity.
- Mechanical grasping of legs forming ant droplets.
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ Social insects and self-organization
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Detrain, C., and J. L. Deneubourg. 2006. "Self-Organized Structures in a Superorganism: Do Ants "Behave" Like Molecules?" Physics of Life Reviews (ISSN 1571-0645). 3, no. 3: 162-187.
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