Figures
Harvester ant foragers waiting inside the nest.
Whether an outgoing forager leaves the nest depends on its rate of interaction with foragers returning with seeds. This simple positive feedback links foraging activity to food availability: the more food is available, the more quickly foragers find it and return to the nest. See Prabhakar et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002670.
Image Credit: Katherine N. Dektar, Stanford University.
Citation: (2012) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 8(8) August 2012. PLoS Comput Biol 8(8): ev08.i08. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v08.i08
Published: August 30, 2012
Copyright: © Dektar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Whether an outgoing forager leaves the nest depends on its rate of interaction with foragers returning with seeds. This simple positive feedback links foraging activity to food availability: the more food is available, the more quickly foragers find it and return to the nest. See Prabhakar et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002670.
Image Credit: Katherine N. Dektar, Stanford University.