Strategies for choosing between alternatives with different attributes: exemplified by house-hunting ants

By Nigel R. Franks, Eamonn B. Mallon, H. Bray, M. J. Hamilton, Thomas C Mischler. 2003

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/61a19af1463753e90d18bc6c90a8d7319b297386

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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Citations in the corpus

Improvement in collective performance with experience in ants (2004, methodology): “During an emigration, speed is important because the whole colony is exposed to potential predators (Franks et al. 2003).”
Modulation of individual behavior and collective decision-making during aggregation site selection by the ant Messor barbarus (2004, background): “…Seeley et al. 1991; Seeley 1995; Mailleux et al. 2000) and the suitability of potential nest sites (Seeley 1977, 1982; Seeley and Morse 1978; Seeley and Buhrman 1999; Visscher and Camazine 1999; Mallon and Franks 2000; Mallon et al. 2001; Mugford et al. 2001; Pratt et al. 2002; Franks et al. 2003).”
The principles of collective animal behaviour (2006, background): “…laboratory, a colony whose nest has been damaged moves to a new site within a few hours, reliably choosing the best site from as many as five alternatives, discriminating among sites according to cavity area and height, entrance size, and light level (Pratt & Pierce 2001; Franks et al. 2003a,b).”
Decision making by small and large house-hunting ant colonies: one size fits all (2006, background): “Part of their decision making process involves quorum sensing (Pratt et al. 2002; Pratt 2005), which can be used flexibly to trade off speed and accuracy in their decision making (Franks et al. 2003a).”
Why do not all workers work? Colony size and workload during emigrations in the ant Temnothorax albipennis (2008, methodology): “When the population in a new site surpasses a certain number, the quorum threshold, all recruiters switch from tandem running to social carrying, i.e. they start to transport passive individuals and brood to the chosen site (Pratt et al. 2002; Franks et al. 2003a).”
Behavioral mechanisms of collective nest-site choice by the ant Temnothorax curvispinosus (2005, background): “When given a choice, colonies show clear preferences for certain nest designs over others, distinguished by cavity size, entrance diameter, and light level (Franks et al., 2003b; Mallon and Franks, 2000; Mallon et al., 2001).”
An agent-based model of collective nest choice by the ant Temnothorax albipennis (2005, background): “Indeed, recent work suggests that the degree of splitting may be a flexible feature of the colony's decision making, with individual workers modulating their behaviour to trade off speed and accuracy of decision making (Franks et al. 2003a).”
Radio tagging reveals the roles of corpulence, experience and social information in ant decision making (2009, background): “albipennis (Franks et al. 2003) and had no observable effects on traffic.”
Quorum sensing by encounter rates in the ant Temnothorax albipennis (2005, background): “This may seem surprising, given previous studies showing a clear preference for larger nests over cavities similar to the small ones used here (Franks et al., 2003b; Mallon and Franks, 2000).”
Collective cognition in animal groups. (2009, background): “If she accepts the nest, based on relatively fixed internal criteria that relate to, among other properties, its size, the size of the nest entrance and brightness [ 55 ], her search is discontinued and she begins to actively canvas other ants to also visit and assess the site.”