Individual versus collective cognition in social insects

TL;DR

This paper reviews how social insects exhibit collective cognition through a mix of individual insect processing and emergent group behaviors, highlighting differences from neural network models.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the sources of collective cognition in social insects, emphasizing the roles of individual cognition and communication patterns.

Findings

Insect colonies can amplify individual cognition or generate emergent group behaviors.

Communication patterns in social insects are less structured than neural networks.

Examples demonstrate diverse mechanisms of collective cognition in social insects.

Abstract

The concerted responses of eusocial insects to environmental stimuli are often referred to as collective cognition on the level of the colony.To achieve collective cognitiona group can draw on two different sources: individual cognitionand the connectivity between individuals.Computation in neural-networks, for example,is attributedmore tosophisticated communication schemes than to the complexity of individual neurons. The case of social insects, however, can be expected to differ. This is since individual insects are cognitively capable units that are often able to process information that is directly relevant at the level of the colony.Furthermore, involved communication patterns seem difficult to implement in a group of insects since these lack clear network structure.This review discusses links between the cognition of an individual insect and that of the colony. We provide examples for collective cognition whose sources span the full spectrum between amplification of individual insect cognition and emergent group-level processes.