Dynamics of task allocation in social insect colonies: scaling effects of colony size versus work activities

Feng, Tao; Charbonneau, Daniel; Qiu, Zhipeng; Kang, Yun

doi:10.1007/s00285-021-01589-z

Cited by 20 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 107 publications

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“…The main hypothesis for the functional role of inactive workers is that they serve as a reserve workforce that can be mobilised quickly when there is a sudden loss of workers or unexpectedly high task demands, thereby increasing colony flexibility and resilience [67,68]. Nevertheless, the benefits derived from having a reserve workforce of inactive individuals have never been quantified, either empirically or otherwise, leading many empirical research to still question this hypothesis [69]. Examples of other explanations include sleep or rest time of individuals [70,71], or delays occurring during task switching and the time the workers require to asses the collected information about task demands without engaging in any work [72].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Learning versus Individual Learning in the Division of Labour

Khajehnejad

García

Meyer

2023

Biology

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Division of labour, or the differentiation of the individuals in a collective across tasks, is a fundamental aspect of social organisations, such as social insect colonies. It allows for efficient resource use and improves the chances of survival for the entire collective. The emergence of large inactive groups of individuals in insect colonies sometimes referred to as laziness, has been a puzzling and hotly debated division-of-labour phenomenon in recent years that is counter to the intuitive notion of effectiveness. It has previously been shown that inactivity can be explained as a by-product of social learning without the need to invoke an adaptive function. While highlighting an interesting and important possibility, this explanation is limited because it is not yet clear whether the relevant aspects of colony life are governed by social learning. In this paper, we explore the two fundamental types of behavioural adaptation that can lead to a division of labour, individual learning and social learning. We find that inactivity can just as well emerge from individual learning alone. We compare the behavioural dynamics in various environmental settings under the social and individual learning assumptions, respectively. We present individual-based simulations backed up by analytic theory, focusing on adaptive dynamics for the social paradigm and cross-learning for the individual paradigm. We find that individual learning can induce the same behavioural patterns previously observed for social learning. This is important for the study of the collective behaviour of social insects because individual learning is a firmly established paradigm of behaviour learning in their colonies. Beyond the study of inactivity, in particular, the insight that both modes of learning can lead to the same patterns of behaviour opens new pathways to approach the study of emergent patterns of collective behaviour from a more generalised perspective.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Learning versus Individual Learning in the Division of Labour

Khajehnejad

García

Meyer

2023

Biology

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“…Multiple approaches have been proposed to solve this issue while still using the Hill function. Some assume that there is only one task (Bonabeau et al, 1996;Arcuri & Lanchier, 2017;Feng et al, 2021), others allow ants to randomly encounter tasks one at a time (Jeanson et al, 2007;Ulrich et al, 2018;Lin, 2021;Ulrich et al, 2021) or perform the task of greatest need which exceeds the individual's threshold (Gove et al, 2009), and finally some calculate relative cues and thresholds so that all tasks can be experienced concurrently (Wu et al, 2018;Jiang et al, 2020;Lynch et al, in submission). The assumption that there is only one task is likely problematic in many cases, as real social insects perform multiple tasks, and variable task numbers can influence model performance (Dornhaus et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalizing the response and satisfaction threshold models for multiple task types: A maximal entropy approach

Lynch,

Pavlic

2024

Preprint

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Response threshold models are often used to test hypotheses about division of labor in social-insect colonies. Each worker's probability to engage in a task rapidly increases when a cue associated with task demand crosses some response threshold. Threshold variability across workers generates an emergent division of labor that is consistent over time and flexibly adaptive to increasing demands, which allows for testable predictions about the shape of hypothetical response-threshold distributions. Although there are myriad different task types in a social-insect colony, the classical response-threshold model is built to understand variability in response to a single type of task. As such, it does not immediately allow for testing predictions about how different workers prioritize different task types or how demand for some tasks interferes with responding to demand for others. To rectify this, we propose a multi-task generalization that degenerates into the standard model for a single task. We replace the classical Hill response probability with a model that draws worker choices from a Boltzmann distribution, which is an approach inspired by multi-class machine learning.

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“…The benefits that would be derived from such a reserve workforce have, to the best of our knowledge, never been quantified, neither empirically nor through modelling. It is thus impossible to say if and when such benefits would outweigh the cost of biomass production and maintenance of inactive workers and overall provide a fitness benefit, and various empirical studies question this hypothesis [ 68 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While individual thresholds provide a plausible proximate mechanism, no connection to ultimate causes is drawn. Closest in spirit to our work is a recent compartmental model that studies how task allocation and passive workers arise from the interactions between individuals [ 68 ]. While this work primarily focuses on the influence of colony size, we are focusing on the influence of environmental factors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining workers’ inactivity in social colonies from first principles

Khajehnejad

García

Meyer

2023

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Social insects are among the ecologically most successful collectively living organisms, with efficient division of labour a key feature of this success. Surprisingly, these efficient colonies often have a large proportion of inactive workers in their workforce, sometimes referred to as lazy workers . The dominant hypotheses explaining this are based on specific life-history traits, specific behavioural features or uncertain environments where inactive workers can provide a ‘reserve’ workforce that can spring into action quickly. While there is a number of experimental studies that show and investigate the presence of inactive workers, mathematical and computational models exploring specific hypotheses are not common. Here, using a simple mathematical model, we show that a parsimonious hypothesis can explain this puzzling social phenomenon. Our model incorporates social interactions and environmental influences into a game-theoretical framework and captures how individuals react to environment by allocating their activity according to environmental conditions. This model shows that inactivity can emerge under specific environmental conditions as a by-product of the task allocation process. Our model confirms the empirical observation that in the case of worker loss, prior homeostatic balance is re-established by replacing some of the lost force with previously inactive workers. Most importantly, our model shows that inactivity in social colonies can be explained without the need to assume an adaptive function for this phenomenon.

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Dynamics of task allocation in social insect colonies: scaling effects of colony size versus work activities

Cited by 20 publications

References 107 publications

Social Learning versus Individual Learning in the Division of Labour

Social Learning versus Individual Learning in the Division of Labour

Generalizing the response and satisfaction threshold models for multiple task types: A maximal entropy approach

Explaining workers’ inactivity in social colonies from first principles

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