title: Collective effects in traffic on bi-directional ant trails.
abstract: Motivated by recent experimental work of Burd et al., we propose a model of bi-directional ant traffic on pre-existing ant trails. It captures in a simple way some of the generic collective features of movements of real ants on a trail. Analysing this model, we demonstrate that there are crucial qualitative differences between vehicular- and ant-traffics. In particular, we predict some unusual features of the flow rate that can be tested experimentally. As in the uni-directional model a non-monotonic density-dependence of the average velocity can be observed in certain parameter regimes. As a consequence of the interaction between oppositely moving ants the flow rate can become approximately constant over some density interval.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, Universität zu Köln, D- 50937 Köln, Germany. aj@thp.uni-koeln.de
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: John
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schadschneider
authors.forename: Debashish
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chowdhury
authors.forename: Katsuhiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nishinari
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*