Mary Allen
Ants act without a defined leader who assigns the work. As if it were a matter of course, the individual ants take on the necessary tasks without a specific work assignment. They are even capable of complex agricultural activities. Scientists in Melbourne are of the opinion that we humans can take an example from the work organization of the ants in order to relieve traffic and optimize factory processes. The ants also provide an answer to the philosophical question of how societies are organized.
Imagine a busy street with slow traffic. And now imagine a sidewalk nearby where hundreds of ants are moving very quietly in a line. While the motorists are fuming and doing nothing else, the ants carry their food to the nest, collaborate vigorously and do their job.
Professor Bernd Meyer from the IT department at Monash University in Melbourne has dedicated his working life to ants and their collaborative decision-making skills. “The ants make pretty complicated decisions,” he explains. “For example, the ants find the best food sources and the quickest way there and back without logistics experts.”
Individually, the insects are not particularly clever, but together they can coordinate their activities well. There is a lot we can learn from this. “The way ants organize themselves can give us insight into how transportation processes can run more smoothly and provide optimization approaches for factory processes.
Tackle complex tasks
Ant colonies are sometimes compared to cities because a myriad of individuals simultaneously coordinate various complex operations. The foraging team forms the breadcrumb column on the sidewalk, another team takes care of the offspring, while others build or defend the ant’s nest, for example. Although the tasks are coordinated in a highly efficient manner, “there is no one sitting there who distributes the tasks and says, ‘You two go in the direction and you three take care of the defence,'” says Professor Meyer.
“The ants all make individual, smaller decisions that only relate to their immediate surroundings. There is no one who keeps an eye on the big picture and yet the colony has the overview as a kind of super organism. They manage to allocate the workforce as a colony in such a way that all needs and requirements can be met.” So far, no one knows exactly how this actually works with the ants.
Professor Meyer also studies forms of slime, “which are not social insects, but still work together”. “The fascinating aspect of these amoebas is that they live as colonies of separate cells for a period of time, and then suddenly merge. This new large cell has multiple nuclei and then acts as a single organism.
Professor Meyer works with Associate Professor Martin Burd from the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, among others. Biologists and computer scientists look at the ants from different angles, but their research “ultimately merges completely,” according to Professor Meyer. “It doesn’t work for the biologists to do their experiments first and then pass on their data so that we can then analyze them. Everything is done collaboratively – and that’s the exciting part. It takes a while to find a common language, but then you get to the point where thinking merges and a new conceptual framework is created. This is what makes new discoveries possible in the first place.”
As a computer scientist, he is interested in “figuring out the underlying mathematical principles” that drive ant behavior. “We create an algorithmic view of the way the ants interact. This is the only way we can unravel the complex behavior of the ants,” says Professor Meyer.
Behavior model
Scientists track individual ants and then create a behavioral model for tens of thousands of individuals over an extended period of time. They try to replicate what they see in an experiment, verify that their model agrees with the data collected, and then use the model to predict and explain unobserved behavior.
For example, studying the Pheidole megacephala ant, Meyer found that when they find a food source, they not only converge there like many other species, but reconsider their decision when new information becomes available. “What happens if we give them a better food source? Many species would ignore this completely, unable to adapt to these changes. However, the Pheidole megacephala would actually deflect.”
The colonies could only choose the better alternative because individual ants made a bad decision. So individual mistakes were important for the group as a whole to improve decisions. “Our models predicted this even before we found a species that actually does it,” explains Professor Meyer.
“If the individual doesn’t make mistakes or act inappropriately, groupthink takes over and suddenly everyone is doing the same thing. You can formulate that mathematically and it looks like you can apply the mathematical formula to other systems – completely different systems, including human groups.”
More than 12,500 ant species have been identified so far, but around 22,000 are believed to exist. “Ants are incredibly successful ecologically,” says Professor Meyer. “They are almost everywhere. That’s one of the interesting aspects – why are they so adaptable?”
Professor Meyer also studies the leafcutter ant and the Asian weaver ant. Leafcutter ants don’t eat the leaves that bring themselves back to their nest – they use them for farming. “They feed them to a mushroom they grow and use that as a food source. Again, this is a very complicated process to organize.” Asian weaver ants are important to mango production in Queensland, where they are used for natural pest control. According to Professor Meyer, the ecosystem services provided by ants are often underestimated.
Important roles
Professor Meyer also studies bees, which are known for their important role in plant pollination, but ‘ants are also a key element of the ecosystem’. Ants, for example, prepare the soil. They scatter seeds and can increase agricultural productivity. It is not yet known to what extent ants (like bees) are affected by environmental toxins and climate change.
“That’s one of the things we’re trying to understand. If environmental pressures increase, what happens to the ants in Queensland, for example, that are used to produce mangoes? Will we then see the same effects as with the bees?” The ants in a colony usually all have the same mother. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense for the individual ant to sacrifice itself for the good of the colony; Ants are absolute team players.
People have a much greater need for their own agency and independence. However, ant-like organizations can sometimes help in the human environment. Professor Meyer says many industries are improving their operations by using algorithms derived from ant behavior. This includes, for example, the Australian wine industry.
Ants fascinate people. He thinks the reason for this lies in the busy, task-oriented lives of ants, which raises a “bigger philosophical question. How are societies organized? How can we achieve a society in which individuals work together for the common good without dictating rules from above?”
Can ants speak?
Ants use sounds to communicate. Even pupated animals manage to emit acoustic signals, as researchers were able to prove for the first time. Ants are not known to be particularly talkative. They handle a large part of their communication via chemical substances, the so-called pheromones.
What is the name of the female ant?
An ant colony has a queen, workers, and males. The workers are sexless, meaning they are neither male nor female, and have no wings.
How do ants exchange information?
Ants feed each other regurgitated liquid. They exchange important information for the well-being of the entire colony. Ants not only share the work, but also the food.
What is special about ants?
The ant has six legs and a body that is divided into three sections and consists of a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. Ants can be reddish-brown, black, or yellowish in color depending on the species. They have armor made of chitin, a very hard substance.