A bee that senses the pheromones of the queen has a decision to make. She can either start sending and amplify and propagate that information backwards to the less informed bees, or she can start walking in a direction that increased the chemical concentration. So we're assuming that a bee can sense its local environment as a typical agent-based model. And it's making a simple calculation to walk towards the higher concentration which is more likely where the queen or other informed bees are. These are the two outcomes of that model.
One of the things that make complexity science so fascinating is the diversity of the systems that it applies to. In this series so far, you've learnt about everything from ecologies to economies, tipping points in ecologies and economies, to power and influence in the 1400s, and even the spread of coronavirus in the lungs and the thing that brings all of these different topics together is complexity. This means that we can study one system to help us understand other systems — including bees.
In today's episode, Orit Peleg, Faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, explains how bees self-organise and produce sophisticated behaviour. In this case, you'll hear how thousands of bees can work out where their queen is at any given point.
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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.