Task Allocation in Social Animal Colonies

社会性动物群体的任务分配

• 批准号: 9603639
• 负责人: Deborah Gordon
• 金额: $ 18.88万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-03-01 至 2000-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9603639&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Task; Allocation; Social; Animal; Colonies

Gordon 9603639 Like a brain or an embryo, a social insect colony functions without central or hierarchical control. Simple decisions by individual units, the workers, lead to the complex behavior of the colony, though no individual directs the behavior of others. Colonies perform a variety of tasks outside the nest, including foraging, nest maintenance work, and patrolling. As conditions change, the numbers of ants required for each task also change. Task allocation is the process that results in the right numbers of ants performing the right tasks for the current situation. How do colonies accomplish this without central control? Individuals make decisions based on local information. These decisions determine whether an individual will switch tasks, an whether it will pursue a task actively or instead remain inactive inside the nest. The proposed work will investigate what cues ants use in making task decisions. The proposed research explores the possibility that the rate or number of interactions among nestmates is one of the cues involved in tasks allocation decisions. The work will use laboratory colonies of marked individuals, in which all behavior inside the nest is visible, and computer simulations based on a mathematical model of task allocation. Because the rate of encounter among ants depends on how they move around, an image analysis system will be employed to track the paths of ants as they move around the laboratory nest and arena. How ants respond to the rate of brief interactions with other ants, will be examined in undisturbed colonies and in experiments that manipulate worker density, and thus encounter rate. Chemical analysis of the hydrocarbons on the surface of an ant s body will test whether ants engaged in a particular task might carry an odour specific to that task, which other ants could use to distinguish the task of the ants they meet. This research should provide new insight into the ways that fairly simple individ ual behavior can generate the complex behavior of social systems.

像大脑或胚胎一样，群居昆虫群体的功能没有中央或等级控制。单个单位（工蚁）的简单决定导致了群体的复杂行为，尽管没有个体指导其他个体的行为。蚁群在巢外执行各种任务，包括觅食、维护巢穴和巡逻。随着条件的变化，每项任务所需的蚂蚁数量也会发生变化。任务分配是一个过程，它导致适当数量的蚂蚁根据当前情况执行适当的任务。在没有中央控制的情况下，殖民地是如何做到这一点的？个人根据当地信息做出决定。这些决定决定了一个个体是否会切换任务，以及它是否会积极地完成任务，还是在巢中保持不活跃。这项拟议的工作将调查蚂蚁在做出任务决策时使用的线索。这项提议的研究探索了这样一种可能性，即鸟巢同伴之间互动的频率或数量是任务分配决策中涉及的线索之一。这项工作将利用实验室里被标记的个体群体，在这些群体中，巢内的所有行为都是可见的，以及基于任务分配数学模型的计算机模拟。由于蚂蚁之间的相遇率取决于它们的移动方式，因此将采用图像分析系统来跟踪蚂蚁在实验室巢穴和竞技场周围移动的路径。蚂蚁如何应对与其他蚂蚁短暂互动的速度，将在未受干扰的蚁群中进行研究，并在操纵工蚁密度的实验中进行研究，从而确定相遇率。对蚂蚁身体表面的碳氢化合物进行化学分析，可以测试从事特定任务的蚂蚁是否携带特定于该任务的气味，其他蚂蚁可以利用这种气味来区分它们遇到的蚂蚁的任务。这项研究应该为相当简单的个人行为如何产生社会系统的复杂行为提供新的见解。