Department of Mathematics, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
Bull Math Biol. 2013 Oct;75(10):1912-40. doi: 10.1007/s11538-013-9876-8. Epub 2013 Aug 8.
Large ant colonies invariably use effective scent trails to guide copious ant numbers to food sources. The success of mass recruitment hinges on the involvement of many colony members to lay powerful trails. However, many ant colonies start off as single queens. How do these same colonies forage efficiently when small, thereby overcoming the hurdles to grow large? In this paper, we study the case of combined group and mass recruitment displayed by some ant species. Using mathematical models, we explore to what extent early group recruitment may aid deployment of scent trails, making such trails available at much smaller colony sizes. We show that a competition between group and mass recruitment may cause oscillatory behaviour mediated by scent trails. This results in a further reduction of colony size to establish trails successfully.
大型蚁群总是使用有效的气味痕迹来引导大量蚂蚁找到食物来源。大量招募的成功取决于许多蚁群成员铺设强大痕迹的参与。然而，许多蚁群最初只有一只蚁后。当它们还很小时，这些蚁群如何有效地觅食，从而克服成长为大型蚁群的障碍呢？在本文中，我们研究了一些蚂蚁物种表现出的组合群体和大量招募现象。我们使用数学模型来探索早期群体招募在多大程度上可以帮助部署气味痕迹，从而在更小的蚁群规模上提供这些痕迹。我们表明，群体招募和大量招募之间的竞争可能会导致气味痕迹介导的振荡行为。这导致了进一步减少蚁群的规模，以成功建立痕迹。
