Modeling ant foraging: a chemotaxis approach with pheromones and trail formation

TL;DR

This paper presents a chemotaxis-based mathematical model of ant foraging that captures trail formation and efficient food removal, demonstrating how simple rules can lead to complex collective behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a continuous PDE model for ant foraging that reproduces trail formation and food removal, highlighting the emergence of complex behavior from simple principles.

Findings

Trail formation correlates with efficient food removal.

The PDE model accurately reproduces observed foraging behaviors.

Trail emergence results from chemotactic interactions.

Abstract

We consider a continuous mathematical description of a population of ants and simulate numerically their foraging behavior using a system of partial differential equations of chemotaxis type. We show that this system accurately reproduces observed foraging behavior, especially spontaneous trail formation and efficient removal of food sources. We show through numerical experiments that trail formation is correlated with efficient food removal. Our results illustrate the emergence of trail formation from simple modeling principles.