Behavioural variation among workers promotes feed-forward loops in a simulated insect colony

Abstract

Coordinated responses in eusocial insect colonies arise from worker interaction networks that enable collective processing of ecologically relevant information. Previous studies have detected a structural motif in these networks known as the feed-forward loop, which functions to process information in other biological regulatory networks (e.g. transcriptional networks). However, the processes that generate feed-forward loops among workers and the consequences for information flow within the colony remain largely unexplored. We constructed an agent-based model to investigate how individual variation in activity and movement shaped the production of feed-forward loops in a simulated insect colony. We hypothesized that individual variation along these axes would generate feed-forward loops by driving variation in interaction frequency among workers. We found that among-individual variation in activity drove over-representation of feed-forward loops in the interaction networks by determining the directionality of interactions. However, despite previous work linking feed-forward loops with efficient information transfer, activity variation did not promote faster or more efficient information flow, thus providing no support for the hypothesis that feed-forward loops reflect selection for enhanced collective functioning. Conversely, individual variation in movement trajectory, despite playing no role in generating feed-forward loops, promoted fast and efficient information flow by linking together otherwise unconnected regions of the nest.

From dyads to collectives: a review of honeybee signalling

“…Finally, networks themselves are group-level behavioural phenotypes, and selection can shape them to achieve specific aims. Network science provides a variety of metrics to capture these structural features (see Table 1 for a list; Farine and Whitehead 2015) which can illustrate how selection may have acted to promote (or reduce) processes such as information flow, disease transmission or division of labour within groups, which would not be apparent through an individual-level approach (Otterstatter and Thomson 2007;Pinter-Wollman et al 2011;Mersch et al 2013;Hasenjager et al 2020;Easter et al 2022). We expand each of these points below, highlighting how current network approaches could be used, introducing studies that have begun to explore these approaches, and discussing extensions to the approach that bring better fit to the honeybee system.…”

“…A final promising approach for identifying functional elements in the structure of colony interaction networks is searching for recurrent patterns, or motifs, across subsets of individuals (Milo et al 2004;Easter et al 2022). One such motif is the feed-forward loop, characterized as a pair of directional pathways between two nodes (e.g.…”