Ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

s are simple animals and their behavioural repertory is limited to somewhere between ten and forty elementary behaviours. This is an attempt to explain the different patterns of self-organization in ants.

Bifurcation

This is an instant transition of the whole system to a new stable pattern when a threshold is reached. Bifurcation

Bifurcation

Bifurcation means the splitting of a main body into two parts.Bifurcation or Bifurcated may refer to:*Bifurcation , the division of issues in a trial for example the division of a page into two parts....

 is also known as multi-stability in which many stable states are possible.

Examples of pattern types:

1. Transition between disordered and ordered pattern
2. Transition from an even use of many food sources to one source.
3. Formation of branched nest galleries.
4. Group preference of one exit by escaping ants.
5. Chain formation of mutual leg grasping.

Synchronization

Oscillating patterns of activity in which individuals at different activity levels stimulate one another emerging from mutual activation.

Examples of pattern types:

1. Short scale rhythms arising from mechanical activation from physical contact.
2. Long scale rhythms in which temporal changes in food needs and larvae stimulate changes in the reproductive cycle.

Self organized waves

Traveling waves of chemical concentration or mechanical deformation.

Examples of pattern types:

1. Alarm waves propagated by physical contact.
2. Rotating trails from spatial changes in food resources acting on trail laying activity.

Self-organized criticality

Self-organized criticality

Self-organized criticality

In physics, self-organized criticality is a property of dynamical systems which have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behaviour thus displays the spatial and/or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase transition, but without the need to tune...

is an abrupt disturbance in a system resulting from a build up of events without external stimuli.

Examples of pattern types:

1. Abrupt changes in feeding activity.
2. Mechanical grasping of legs forming ant droplets.