The more crowded they are, the more often each ant will bump into another ant. If the area of their territory is expanded, the frequency of contact decreases. Perhaps, Gordon thinks, each ant has a threshold for normality and adjusts its path shape depending on how often the number of encounters exceeds or falls short of that threshold.
If the territory shrinks, the number of contacts increases and the ant alters its search pattern. If it expands, contact decreases and it alters the pattern a different way.
In the Arizona harvester ants, Gordon studies tasks besides patrolling. Each ant has a job.
I divide the tasks into four: foraging, nest maintenance, midden and patrolling - patrollers are the ones that come out first in the morning and look for food. The foragers go where the patrollers find food.
The colony has about eight different foraging paths. Every day it uses several of them. The patrollers go out first on the trails and they attract each other when they find food. By the end of an hours patrolling, most patrollers are on just a few trails. . . . All the foragers have to do is go where there are the most patrollers.
Each ant has its prescribed task, but the ants can switch tasks if the collective needs it. An ant on housekeeping duty will decide to forage. No one told it to do so and Gordon and other entomologists dont know how that happens.
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