The adaptive value of tandem communication in ants: insights from an agent-based model

Abstract

Social animals often share information about the location of resources, such as a food source or a new nest-site. One well-studied communication strategy in ants is tandem running, whereby a leader guides a recruit to a resource. Tandem running is considered an example of animal teaching because a leader adjusts her behaviour and invests time to help another ant to learn the location of a resource more efficiently. Tandem running also has costs, such as waiting inside the nest for a leader and a reduced walking speed. Whether and when these costs outweigh the benefits of tandem running is not well understood. We developed an agent-based simulation model to investigate the conditions that favour communication by tandem running during foraging. We predicted that the spatio-temporal distribution of food sources, colony size and the ratio of scouts and recruits affect colony foraging success. Our results suggest that communication is favoured when food sources are hard to find, of variable quality and long lasting. These results mirror the findings of simulations of honeybee communication. Scouts locate food sources faster than tandem followers in some environments, suggesting that tandem running may fulfil the criteria of teaching only in some situations. Furthermore, tandem running was only beneficial above a critical colony size threshold. Taken together, our model suggests that there is a considerable parameter range that favours colonies that do not use communication, which could explain why many social insects with small colony sizes forage solitarily.