Nutritional Regulation Influencing Colony Dynamics and Task Allocations in Social Insect Colonies

TL;DR

This study uses an adaptive model to explore how nutritional factors influence social insect colony dynamics, revealing thresholds for survival and the importance of brood nutrition and division of labor.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical model linking nutritional status to colony survival and task allocation, highlighting bistability and critical population thresholds.

Findings

Colony survival depends on brood nutrition and division of labor.

Bistability leads to multiple stable states and survival thresholds.

Better nutrition improves larval survival and colony growth.

Abstract

In this paper, we use an adaptive modeling framework to model and study how nutritional status (measured by the protein to carbohydrate ratio) may regulate population dynamics and foraging task allocation of social insect colonies. Mathematical analysis of our model shows that both investment to brood rearing and brood nutrition are important for colony survival and dynamics. When division of labor and/or nutrition are in an intermediate value range, the model undergoes a backward bifurcation and creates multiple attractors due to bistability. This bistability implies that there is a threshold population size required for colony survival. When the investment in brood is large enough or nutritional requirements are less strict the colony tends to survive, otherwise the colony faces collapse. Our model suggests that the needs of colony survival are shaped by the brood survival probability, which requires good nutritional status. As a consequence, better nutritional status can lead to a better survival rate of larvae, and thus a larger worker population.