ABSTRACT

The evolution of sociality has created the need for information transfer among group members. Insects that live in societies cannot behave as if they were solitary; rather, actions by different group members need to be integrated to achieve desirable outcomes at the level of the group. The ways in which individuals exchange information depends largely on the size of the society. Small societies can rely on all individuals having knowledge about which tasks need to be done and where to go, but global knowledge about all tasks needed by a colony is much harder to achieve once group size increases (Deneubourg et al. 1987). Groups comprising a large number of individuals cannot rely on all individuals having perfect information about their colony’s needs, but must instead rely on their interactions with their peers as well as information directly obtained from their immediate surroundings. The result is self-organized emergence of adaptive behavior at the group level (Camazine et al. 2001).