Nest architecture shapes the collective behaviour of harvester ants.
Structures influence how individuals interact and, therefore, shape the collective behaviours that emerge from these interactions. Here I show that the structure of a nest influences the collective behaviour of harvester ant colonies. Using network analysis, I quantify nest architecture and find that as chamber connectivity and redundancy of connections among chambers increase, so does a colony's speed of recruitment to food. Interestingly, the volume of the chambers did not influence speed of recruitment, suggesting that the spatial organization of a nest has a greater impact on collective behaviour than the number of workers it can hold. Thus, by changing spatial constraints on social interactions organisms can modify their behaviour and impact their fitness.
BioCircuits Institute, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA nmpinter@ucsd.edu.
Noa
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Pinter-Wollman
D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002140:California; D009425:Nesting Behavior; D012919:Social Behavior; D013037:Spatial Behavior
Veromessor andrei; collective behaviour; foraging; network theory