title: Universality in ant behaviour.
abstract: Prediction for social systems is a major challenge. Universality at the social level has inspired a unified theory for urban living but individual variation makes predicting relationships within societies difficult. Here, we show that in ant societies individual average speed is higher when event duration is longer. Expressed as a single scaling function, this relationship is universal because for any event duration an ant, on average, moves at the corresponding average speed except for a short acceleration and deceleration at the beginning and end. This establishes cause and effect within a social system and may inform engineering and control of artificial ones.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK k.christensen@imperial.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK Centre for Complexity Science, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Papavassiliou
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, Queen's Gate 180, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Figueiredo
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, 24 Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK.
authors.forename: Nigel R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Franks
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK.
authors.forename: Ana B
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9300-6986
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Sendova-Franks
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D008124:Locomotion; D008954:Models, Biological; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: ant; behaviour; controlled experiment; social systems; universality