4min chapter

COMPLEXITY cover image

Michael Garfield & David Krakauer on Evolution, Information, and Jurassic Park

COMPLEXITY

CHAPTER

The Fluid Task Allocation of Ants

In the 80s there was some understanding that ants were not merely limited by their body type by like size or size of specific parts you know people think about workers versus soldiers I think in the lay understanding. That was replaced at least temporarily by this polyethism this notion that ants are changing function as they age and that's not adequate to describe what's going on here right so what was it that you and your colleagues found that demonstrated that that was not a sufficient explanation well let's go back to that's per secondright now yeah the colony shifts around the numbers of ants allocated to different tasks as conditions are changing. For example if there's extra food a colony might allocate more ants to

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