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Carlesso D, Stewardson M, McLean DJ, Mazué GPF, Garnier S, Feinerman O, Reid CR. Leaderless consensus decision-making determines cooperative transport direction in weaver ants. Proc Biol Sci 2024; 291:20232367. [PMID: 39140325 PMCID: PMC11323088 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2367] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/18/2023] [Revised: 03/04/2024] [Accepted: 07/15/2024] [Indexed: 08/15/2024] Open
Abstract
Animal groups need to achieve and maintain consensus to minimize conflict among individuals and prevent group fragmentation. An excellent example of a consensus challenge is cooperative transport, where multiple individuals cooperate to move a large item together. This behaviour, regularly displayed by ants and humans only, requires individuals to agree on which direction to move in. Unlike humans, ants cannot use verbal communication but most likely rely on private information and/or mechanical forces sensed through the carried item to coordinate their behaviour. Here, we investigated how groups of weaver ants achieve consensus during cooperative transport using a tethered-object protocol, where ants had to transport a prey item that was tethered in place with a thin string. This protocol allows the decoupling of the movement of informed ants from that of uninformed individuals. We showed that weaver ants pool together the opinions of all group members to increase their navigational accuracy. We confirmed this result using a symmetry-breaking task, in which we challenged ants with navigating an open-ended corridor. Weaver ants are the first reported ant species to use a 'wisdom-of-the-crowd' strategy for cooperative transport, demonstrating that consensus mechanisms may differ according to the ecology of each species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniele Carlesso
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales2109, Australia
| | - Madelyne Stewardson
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales2109, Australia
| | - Donald James McLean
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales2109, Australia
| | - Geoffrey P. F. Mazué
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales2109, Australia
| | - Simon Garnier
- Department of Biological Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA
| | - Ofer Feinerman
- Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
| | - Chris R. Reid
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales2109, Australia
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Boem F, Greslehner GP, Konsman JP, Chiu L. Minding the gut: extending embodied cognition and perception to the gut complex. Front Neurosci 2024; 17:1172783. [PMID: 38260022 PMCID: PMC10800657 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1172783] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2023] [Accepted: 10/30/2023] [Indexed: 01/24/2024] Open
Abstract
Scientific and philosophical accounts of cognition and perception have traditionally focused on the brain and external sense organs. The extended view of embodied cognition suggests including other parts of the body in these processes. However, one organ has often been overlooked: the gut. Frequently conceptualized as merely a tube for digesting food, there is much more to the gut than meets the eye. Having its own enteric nervous system, sometimes referred to as the "second brain," the gut is also an immune organ and has a large surface area interacting with gut microbiota. The gut has been shown to play an important role in many physiological processes, and may arguably do so as well in perception and cognition. We argue that proposals of embodied perception and cognition should take into account the role of the "gut complex," which considers the enteric nervous, endocrine, immune, and microbiota systems as well as gut tissue and mucosal structures. The gut complex is an interface between bodily tissues and the "internalized external environment" of the gut lumen, involved in many aspects of organismic activity beyond food intake. We thus extend current embodiment theories and suggest a more inclusive account of how to "mind the gut" in studying cognitive processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federico Boem
- Section Philosophy, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
| | | | - Jan Pieter Konsman
- IMMUNOlogy from CONcepts and ExPeriments to Translation, CNRS UMR, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
| | - Lynn Chiu
- Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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Burchill AT, Pavlic TP, Pratt SC, Reid CR. Weaver ants regulate the rate of prey delivery during collective vertical transport. J Exp Biol 2023; 226:jeb245634. [PMID: 37671439 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.245634] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2023] [Accepted: 08/21/2023] [Indexed: 09/07/2023]
Abstract
The collective transport of massive food items by ant teams is a striking example of biological cooperation, but it remains unclear how these decentralized teams coordinate to overcome the various challenges associated with transport. Previous research has focused on transport across horizontal surfaces and very shallow inclines, disregarding the complexity of natural foraging environments. In the ant Oecophylla smaragdina, prey are routinely carried up tree trunks to arboreal nests. Using this species, we induced collective transport over a variety of angled surfaces with varying prey masses to investigate how ants respond to inclines. We found that weight and incline pose qualitatively different challenges during transport. Prey were carried over vertical and inclined surfaces faster than across horizontal surfaces, even though inclines were associated with longer routes and a higher probability of dropping the load. This additional speed was associated with more transporters being allocated to loads on steeper inclines and not with the persistence of individual ants. Ant teams also regulated a stable prey delivery rate (rate of return per transporter) across all treatments. Our proposed constrained optimization model suggests a possible explanation for these results; theoretically, prey intake rate at the colony level is maximized when the allocation of transporters yields a similar prey delivery rate across loads.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew T Burchill
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
| | - Theodore P Pavlic
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
- School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
| | - Stephen C Pratt
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
| | - Chris R Reid
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW 2109, Australia
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Shpurov I, Froese T. Evidence of Critical Dynamics in Movements of Bees inside a Hive. ENTROPY (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2022; 24:1840. [PMID: 36554245 PMCID: PMC9777906 DOI: 10.3390/e24121840] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2022] [Revised: 12/14/2022] [Accepted: 12/15/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
Social insects such as honey bees exhibit complex behavioral patterns, and their distributed behavioral coordination enables decision-making at the colony level. It has, therefore, been proposed that a high-level description of their collective behavior might share commonalities with the dynamics of neural processes in brains. Here, we investigated this proposal by focusing on the possibility that brains are poised at the edge of a critical phase transition and that such a state is enabling increased computational power and adaptability. We applied mathematical tools developed in computational neuroscience to a dataset of bee movement trajectories that were recorded within the hive during the course of many days. We found that certain characteristics of the activity of the bee hive system are consistent with the Ising model when it operates at a critical temperature, and that the system's behavioral dynamics share features with the human brain in the resting state.
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Joshi V, Popp S, Werfel J, McCreery HF. Alignment with neighbours enables escape from dead ends in flocking models. J R Soc Interface 2022; 19:20220356. [PMID: 35975561 PMCID: PMC9382454 DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2022.0356] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2022] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Coordinated movement in animal groups (flocks, schools, herds, etc.) is a classic and well-studied form of collective behaviour. Most theoretical studies consider agents in unobstructed spaces; however, many animals move in often complicated environments and must navigate around and through obstacles. Here we consider simulated agents behaving according to typical flocking rules, with the addition of repulsion from obstacles, and study their collective behaviour in environments with concave obstacles (dead ends). We find that groups of such agents heading for a goal can spontaneously escape dead ends without wall-following or other specialized behaviours, in what we term 'flocking escapes'. The mechanism arises when agents align with one another while heading away from the goal, forming a self-stable cluster that persists long enough to exit the obstacle and avoids becoming trapped again when turning back towards the goal. Solitary agents under the same conditions are never observed to escape. We show that alignment with neighbours reduces the effective turning speed of the group while letting individuals maintain high manoeuvrability when needed. The relative robustness of flocking escapes in our studies suggests that this emergent behaviour may be relevant for a variety of animal species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Varun Joshi
- School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
| | - Stefan Popp
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
| | - Justin Werfel
- School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02134, USA
| | - Helen F. McCreery
- School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02134, USA
- Biology Department, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA
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Valentini G, Pavlic TP, Walker SI, Pratt SC, Biro D, Sasaki T. Naïve individuals promote collective exploration in homing pigeons. eLife 2021; 10:e68653. [PMID: 34928230 PMCID: PMC8687659 DOI: 10.7554/elife.68653] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2021] [Accepted: 10/26/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Group-living animals that rely on stable foraging or migratory routes can develop behavioural traditions to pass route information down to inexperienced individuals. Striking a balance between exploitation of social information and exploration for better alternatives is essential to prevent the spread of maladaptive traditions. We investigated this balance during cumulative route development in the homing pigeon Columba livia. We quantified information transfer within pairs of birds in a transmission-chain experiment and determined how birds with different levels of experience contributed to the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Newly introduced naïve individuals were initially more likely to initiate exploration than experienced birds, but the pair soon settled into a pattern of alternating leadership with both birds contributing equally. Experimental pairs showed an oscillating pattern of exploration over generations that might facilitate the discovery of more efficient routes. Our results introduce a new perspective on the roles of leadership and information pooling in the context of collective learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gabriele Valentini
- Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Tempe, United States
| | - Theodore P Pavlic
- Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Sustainability, Athens, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Complex Adaptive Systems, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, Tempe, United States
| | - Sara Imari Walker
- Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Tempe, United States
- Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, United States
| | - Stephen C Pratt
- Arizona State University, Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Tempe, United States
| | - Dora Biro
- University of Oxford, Department of Zoology, Oxford, United States
- University of Rochester, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Rochester, United States
| | - Takao Sasaki
- University of Georgia, Odum School of Ecology, Athens, United States
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