Richardson, T.O., Mullon, C., Marshall, J.A.R. orcid.org/0000-0002-1506-167X et al. (2 more authors) (2018) The influence of the few: a stable 'oligarchy' controls information flow in house-hunting ants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285 (1872). 20172726. ISSN 0962-8452
Abstract
Animals that live together in groups often face difficult choices, such as which food resource to exploit, or which direction to flee in response to a predator. When there are costs associated with deadlock or group fragmentation, it is essential that the group achieves a consensus decision. Here, we study consensus formation in emigrating ant colonies faced with a binary choice between two identical nest-sites. By individually tagging each ant with a unique radio-frequency identification microchip, and then recording all ant-to-ant ‘tandem runs’—stereotyped physical interactions that communicate information about potential nest-sites—we assembled the networks that trace the spread of consensus throughout the colony. Through repeated emigrations, we show that both the order in which these networks are assembled and the position of each individual within them are consistent from emigration to emigration. We demonstrate that the formation of the consensus is delegated to an influential but exclusive minority of highly active individuals—an ‘oligarchy’— which is further divided into two subgroups, each specialized upon a different tandem running role. Finally, we show that communication primarily occurs between subgroups not within them, and further, that such between-group communication is more efficient than within-group communication.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | social insect; network analysis; communication; division of labour; animal behaviour; decision-making |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 28 Mar 2018 10:56 |
Last Modified: | 28 Mar 2018 10:56 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2726 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rspb.2017.2726 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:129026 |