{"title":"A single-pheromone model accounts for empirical patterns of ant colony foraging previously modeled using two pheromones","authors":"Eric Saund , Daniel Ari Friedman","doi":"10.1016/j.cogsys.2023.02.005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In a 2009 paper, Dussutour et al. proposed that big headed ants (<em>Pheidole megacephala</em>) employ two attractant pheromones during foraging: one for exploration and another during food gathering. This claim was consistent with, and argued to be supported by, laboratory studies of ant exploration and food-gathering in a Y-maze apparatus. The authors measured foraging activity and colony foraging choice in terms of the number of ants choosing different branches over time, where experimental conditions modified the history of food availability at the end of each branch. They built a two-pheromone mathematical model to account for observed rates and proportions of ants traversing the left versus right branch. Here we show that the main reported experimental observations can be explained by a one-pheromone model. Our findings show that it is plausible, but unnecessary, to hypothesize that these ants employ two distinct pheromones in order to account for the two principal results of the Dussutour et al. study, and therefore, the study falls short of dispositive evidence for a two-pheromone model. More broadly, we highlight that patterns of animal behavior can be ambiguous with respect to sensory and cognitive mechanisms, hopefully motivating future modeling efforts that perform formal comparison across models with different structure.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55242,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Systems Research","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 81-89"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cognitive Systems Research","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389041723000207","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In a 2009 paper, Dussutour et al. proposed that big headed ants (Pheidole megacephala) employ two attractant pheromones during foraging: one for exploration and another during food gathering. This claim was consistent with, and argued to be supported by, laboratory studies of ant exploration and food-gathering in a Y-maze apparatus. The authors measured foraging activity and colony foraging choice in terms of the number of ants choosing different branches over time, where experimental conditions modified the history of food availability at the end of each branch. They built a two-pheromone mathematical model to account for observed rates and proportions of ants traversing the left versus right branch. Here we show that the main reported experimental observations can be explained by a one-pheromone model. Our findings show that it is plausible, but unnecessary, to hypothesize that these ants employ two distinct pheromones in order to account for the two principal results of the Dussutour et al. study, and therefore, the study falls short of dispositive evidence for a two-pheromone model. More broadly, we highlight that patterns of animal behavior can be ambiguous with respect to sensory and cognitive mechanisms, hopefully motivating future modeling efforts that perform formal comparison across models with different structure.
期刊介绍:
Cognitive Systems Research is dedicated to the study of human-level cognition. As such, it welcomes papers which advance the understanding, design and applications of cognitive and intelligent systems, both natural and artificial.
The journal brings together a broad community studying cognition in its many facets in vivo and in silico, across the developmental spectrum, focusing on individual capacities or on entire architectures. It aims to foster debate and integrate ideas, concepts, constructs, theories, models and techniques from across different disciplines and different perspectives on human-level cognition. The scope of interest includes the study of cognitive capacities and architectures - both brain-inspired and non-brain-inspired - and the application of cognitive systems to real-world problems as far as it offers insights relevant for the understanding of cognition.
Cognitive Systems Research therefore welcomes mature and cutting-edge research approaching cognition from a systems-oriented perspective, both theoretical and empirically-informed, in the form of original manuscripts, short communications, opinion articles, systematic reviews, and topical survey articles from the fields of Cognitive Science (including Philosophy of Cognitive Science), Artificial Intelligence/Computer Science, Cognitive Robotics, Developmental Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience and Neuromorphic Engineering. Empirical studies will be considered if they are supplemented by theoretical analyses and contributions to theory development and/or computational modelling studies.