. The Biological bulletin. Biology; Zoology; Biology; Marine Biology. 270 C. DETRAIN AND DENEUBOURG Return without trail laying Able to ingest "^ NO desired volume?. Figure 2. Algorithm and decision-making processes followed by the ants when exploiting liquid food sources. Drawn from results of Mailleux ft ai. 201)0. and foraging strategies can emerge through simple rules for information transfer between individuals. Moreover, in mul- tiple-source situations, the same behavioral rule can pro- duce different group-level patterns of exploitation: these range from a scattering of forag
. The Biological bulletin. Biology; Zoology; Biology; Marine Biology. 270 C. DETRAIN AND DENEUBOURG Return without trail laying Able to ingest "^ NO desired volume?. Figure 2. Algorithm and decision-making processes followed by the ants when exploiting liquid food sources. Drawn from results of Mailleux ft ai. 201)0. and foraging strategies can emerge through simple rules for information transfer between individuals. Moreover, in mul- tiple-source situations, the same behavioral rule can pro- duce different group-level patterns of exploitation: these range from a scattering of foragers over all food items to a focus on one or a few food sources (Nicolis and Deneu- bourg, 1999). The Concept of Intelligent Decision Criteria One way for insect societies to cope with the complexity of their environment is the use of intelligent decision criteria at the individual level. Intelligent decision criteria do not require the ant to make some complex and precise assess- ment of all environmental parameters; instead, they rely on cues that automatically integrate several variables (inside or outside the nest). Since potential cues vary in their value as indicators, one might expect that, through evolution, only very good cues—those with a high, reliable, and functional informative content—have been retained as decision crite- ria. In oilier words, the "intelligence" of a decision criterion results not simply from the use of cues that intrinsically catch a part of the environmental complexity, but also from the selection of the best cue—that is, the one most pertinent for the activity of the ants. Both recruitment strategies described in the previous section are based on such intelli- gent decision criteria. As regards scavenging, prey retrievability is a seemingly crude estimator of prey size. Nevertheless, it is a highly functional decision criterion because it integrates informa- tion not only about the size, the shape, and the weight of the prey, bu
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Keywords: ., bookauthorlilliefrankrat, booksubjectbiology, booksubjectzoology
