Individual error correction drives responsive self-assembly of army ant scaffolds
Abstract
Human-designed infrastructures and networks relying on centralized or hierarchical control are susceptible to single-point catastrophic failure when disrupted. By contrast, most complex biological systems employ distributed control and can be more robust to perturbations. In field experiments with Eciton burchellii army ants, we show that scaffold structures, self-assembled by living ants, emerge in response to disrupted traffic on inclines, facilitating traffic flow and stemming losses of foragers and prey. Informed by our observations, we present a theoretical model based on proportional control and negative feedback, which may be relevant to many distributed systems in which group-level properties can be modified through individual error sensing and correction. The mechanism is simple, and ants only require information about their individual state.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Apr 23, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.2013741118
Entities
People
- Albert B Kao
- Chris R Reid
- Christopher Lustri
- Iain Couzin
- Matthew Lutz
- Simon Garnier
Organizations
- Australian Research Council
- German Research Foundation
- Macquarie University
- Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
- National Science Foundation
- New Jersey Institute of Technology
- Office of Naval Research
- Santa Fe Institute
- University of Konstanz