- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10275100
- Journal Name:
- 12th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2021)
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Creating a routing backbone is a fundamental problem in both biology and engineering. The routing backbone of the trail networks of arboreal turtle ants (Cephalotes goniodontus) connects many nests and food sources using trail pheromone deposited by ants as they walk. Unlike species that forage on the ground, the trail networks of arboreal ants are constrained by the vegetation. We examined what objectives the trail networks meet by comparing the observed ant trail networks with networks of random, hypothetical trail networks in the same surrounding vegetation and with trails optimized for four objectives: minimizing path length, minimizing average edge length, minimizing number of nodes, and minimizing opportunities to get lost. The ants’ trails minimized path length by minimizing the number of nodes traversed rather than choosing short edges. In addition, the ants’ trails reduced the opportunity for ants to get lost at each node, favoring nodes with 3D configurations most likely to be reinforced by pheromone. Thus, rather than finding the shortest edges, turtle ant trail networks take advantage of natural variation in the environment to favor coherence, keeping the ants together on the trails.
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Abstract
<p>This data set contains 194778 quasireaction subgraphs extracted from CHO transition networks with 2-6 non-hydrogen atoms (CxHyOz, 2 <= x + z <= 6).</p> <p>The complete table of subgraphs (including file locations) is in CHO-6-atoms-subgraphs.csv file. The subgraphs are in GraphML format (http://graphml.graphdrawing.org) and are compressed using bzip2. All subgraphs are undirected and unweighted. The reactant and product nodes (initial and final) are labeled in the "type" node attribute. The nodes are represented as multi-molecule SMILES strings. The edges are labeled by the reaction rules in SMARTS representation. The forward and backward reading of the SMARTS string should be considered equivalent.</p> <p>The generation and analysis of this data set is described in<br /> D. Rappoport, Statistics and Bias-Free Sampling of Reaction Mechanisms from Reaction Network Models, 2023, submitted. Preprint at ChemrXiv, DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-wltcr</p> <p>Simulation parameters<br /> - CHO networks constructed using polar bond break/bond formation rule set for CHO.<br /> - High-energy nodes were excluded using the following rules:<br /> (i) more than 3 rings, (ii) triple and allene bonds in rings, (iii) double bonds at<br /> bridge atoms,(iv) double bonds in fused 3-membered rings.<br /> - Neutral nodes were defined as containing only neutral molecules.<br /> -
Abstract Biological transportation networks must balance competing functional priorities. The self-organizing mechanisms used to generate such networks have inspired scalable algorithms to construct and maintain low-cost and efficient human-designed transport networks. The pheromone-based trail networks of ants have been especially valuable in this regard. Here, we use turtle ants as our focal system: In contrast to the ant species usually used as models for self-organized networks, these ants live in a spatially constrained arboreal environment where both nesting options and connecting pathways are limited. Thus, they must solve a distinct set of challenges which resemble those faced by human transport engineers constrained by existing infrastructure. Here, we ask how a turtle ant colony’s choice of which nests to include in a network may be influenced by their potential to create connections to other nests. In laboratory experiments with
Cephalotes varians andCephalotes texanus , we show that nest choice is influenced by spatial constraints, but in unexpected ways. Under one spatial configuration, colonies preferentially occupied more connected nest sites; however, under another spatial configuration, this preference disappeared. Comparing the results of these experiments to an agent-based model, we demonstrate that this apparently idiosyncratic relationship between nest connectivity and nest choice can emerge without nestmore » -
Abstract Ants communicate via an arsenal of different pheromones produced in a variety of exocrine glands. For example, ants release alarm pheromones in response to danger to alert their nestmates and to trigger behavioral alarm responses. Here we characterize the alarm pheromone and the alarm response of the clonal raider ant
Ooceraea biroi , a species that is amenable to laboratory studies but for which no pheromones have been identified. During an alarm response, ants quickly become unsettled, leave their nest pile, and are sometimes initially attracted to the source of alarm, but ultimately move away from it. We find that the alarm pheromone is released from the head of the ant and identify the putative alarm pheromone as a blend of two compounds found in the head, 4-methyl-3-heptanone and 4-methyl-3-heptanol. These compounds are sufficient to induce alarm behavior alone and in combination. They elicit similar, though slightly different behavioral features of the alarm response, with 4-methyl-3-heptanone being immediately repulsive and 4-methyl-3-heptanol being initially attractive before causing ants to move away. The behavioral response to these compounds in combination is dose-dependent, with ants becoming unsettled and attracted to the source of alarm pheromone at low concentrations and repulsed at high concentrations. Whilemore » -
We study the problem of house-hunting in ant colonies, where ants reach consensus on a new nest and relocate their colony to that nest, from a distributed computing perspective. We propose a house-hunting algorithm that is biologically inspired by Temnothorax ants. Each ant is modelled as a probabilistic agent with limited power, and there is no central control governing the ants. We show a (log n) lower bound on the running time of our proposed house-hunting algorithm, where n is the number of ants. Further, we show a matching upper bound of expected O(log n) rounds for environments with only one candidate nest for the ants to move to. Our work provides insights into the house-hunting process, giving a perspective on how environmental factors such as nest qualities or a quorum rule can affect the emigration process. In particular, we find that a quorum threshold that is high enough causes transports to the inferior nest to cease to happen after O(log n) rounds when there are two nests in the environment.