Simulation of Nest Assessment Behavior by Ant Scouts

Abstract

The scouts of Leptothorax albipennis colonies find and assess new nest sites, when their current nests become uninhabitable. Observations of these scouts have suggested that they assess, among other things, the integrity of the internal periphery and the size of the potential nest site. The hypothesis that the scouts use a ‘Buffon’s needle algorithm’ to estimate the nest size is supported by experiments. In this paper, we present a behavioral model for the nest assessment of the scouts. This behavior is implemented on an ant-bot, asim ulated scout model, to study the assessment process. We present the simulation results obtained from this model by systematically varying the behavior and analyzing how well the integrity of the periphery and the size of the nest was evaluated. The results indicate that the accuracy of these two evaluations requires conflicting exploration behaviors, and an optimal behavior requires a compromise in the accuracy of both.