Lee S-H, Bardunias P, Su N-Y
Department of Entomology and Nematology, Ft. Lauderdale Research and Education Center, University of Florida, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33314, USA.
J Theor Biol. 2006 Dec 21;243(4):493-500. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2006.07.026. Epub 2006 Jul 27.
Subterranean termites excavate tunnels in a search pattern to encounter food in soil. To investigate the effect of food size, food distribution and the branch length of tunnels on food encounter rate we used a lattice gas model to simulate tunnels of the Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki. The model made use of minimized local rules derived from empirical data to simulate termite tunnel patterns in featureless soil. Food distributions with three types (uniform, random, and clumped) were defined by using an I-index proposed by Zimmer and Johnson (1985). The food encounter rate was higher in a clumped than in non-clumped (uniform and random) distribution of food particles. When food particle size was varied in random distributions of food particles a maximum encounter rate was found, with particles of larger or smaller size being encountered less frequently. We also discussed the relationship between the branch tunnel length and the tunnel search pattern in minimizing the redundancy of overlapping branches.
地下白蚁以搜索模式挖掘隧道，以便在土壤中找到食物。为了研究食物大小、食物分布以及隧道分支长度对食物相遇率的影响，我们使用格子气模型来模拟台湾乳白蚁（Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki）的隧道。该模型利用从经验数据得出的最小化局部规则，来模拟无特征土壤中的白蚁隧道模式。通过使用齐默尔和约翰逊（1985年）提出的I指数，定义了三种类型（均匀、随机和聚集）的食物分布。在食物颗粒聚集分布的情况下，食物相遇率高于非聚集（均匀和随机）分布。当在食物颗粒的随机分布中改变食物颗粒大小时，发现了一个最大相遇率，较大或较小尺寸的颗粒被遇到的频率较低。我们还讨论了分支隧道长度与隧道搜索模式之间的关系，以尽量减少重叠分支的冗余。
