Colony entropy—Allocation of goods in ant colonies
Fig 1
Quantifying food distribution within an ant colony by combining single ant tracking with fluorescent imaging.
a) Two tagged workers engaged in trophallaxis. The identity of ants (orange numbers) was determined using Bugtag barcodes. The volume of food in the ants’ crop is measured using fluorescence imaging and overlaid in red. b-d) Food distribution across the colony and at different stages of the experiment. Markers (round: non-forager, square: forager) overlaid on ants depict their crop contents. Marker size is proportional to the food load held by each ant: Pa (small markers were set to a minimal size for clarity). Color division in markers of all ants depicts the computationally derived proportions of food in their crops according to the forager that first collected it (‘food-types’): (P(f|A = a)). Scale bars are 1cm. See also supplemental movie “Food dissemination in ant colony”.