Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges

Chandrasekhar, Arjun, Marshall, James AR, Austin, Cortnea, Navlakha, Saket, Gordon, Deborah M (October 2021) Better tired than lost: Turtle ant trail networks favor coherence over short edges. PLoS Computational Biology, 17 (10). e1009523. ISSN 1553-7358

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Paper
Subjects:	bioinformatics bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification bioinformatics > computational biology > algorithms organism description > animal organism description > animal > insect > arboreal turtle ants bioinformatics > computational biology organism description > animal > insect bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification > protein types > pheromones bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification > protein types
CSHL Authors:	Navlakha, Saket
Communities:	CSHL labs > Navlakha lab
SWORD Depositor:	CSHL Elements
Depositing User:	CSHL Elements
Date:	21 October 2021
Date Deposited:	27 Oct 2021 14:22
Last Modified:	23 Jan 2024 19:02
PMCID:	PMC8562808
URI:	https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/40401

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