Task fulfilment and temporal patterns of activity in artificial ant colonies

Abstract

Since the discovery of self-synchronization of activity in ant colonies some authors have argued that this phenomenon lacks any adaptive significance, while others have suggested that there may be some functional behaviors related to these rhythmical patterns of activity. In this paper, we introduce a mobile automata model of task fulfilment in ant colonies with self-synchronized activity, and test if these synchronized patterns provide any advantage when compared with non-synchronized activity patterns.