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Response Threshold Reinforcement and Division of Labor in Insect Societies

Author

Listed:
  • Guy Theraulaz
  • Eric Bonabeau
  • Jean-Louis Deneubourg

Abstract

A model of division of labour in insect societies based on variable response thresholds is introduced. Response thresholds refer to likelihood of reacting to task-associated stimuli. Low threshold individuals perform tasks at a lower level of stimulus than high threshold individuals. Within individual workers, performing a given task induces a decrease of the corresponding threshold, and not performing the task induces an increase of the threshold. This combined reinforcement process leads to the emergence of specialized workers, that is, workers that are more responsive to stimuli associated with particular task requirements, from a group of initially identical individuals. Predictions of the dynamics of task specialization resulting from this model are presented. Predictions are also made as to what should be observed when specialists of a given task are removed from the colony and reintroduced after a varying amount of time:\enskip the colony does not recover the same state as prior to the perturbation and the difference between before and after the perturbation is more strongly marked as the time between separation and reintroduction increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Guy Theraulaz & Eric Bonabeau & Jean-Louis Deneubourg, 1998. "Response Threshold Reinforcement and Division of Labor in Insect Societies," Working Papers 98-01-006, Santa Fe Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:safiwp:98-01-006
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    Cited by:

    1. Tamás Dávid-Barrett & R.I.M. Dunbar, 2014. "Social elites can emerge naturally when interaction in networks is restricted," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(1), pages 58-68.
    2. T. Schmickl & K. Crailsheim, 2007. "TaskSelSim: a model of the self-organization of the division of labour in honeybees," Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 101-125, August.
    3. Maria-del-Mar Bibiloni-Femenias & José Guerrero & Juan-José Miñana & Oscar Valero, 2021. "Indistinguishability Operators via Yager t -norms and Their Applications to Swarm Multi-Agent Task Allocation," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-21, January.
    4. Jennifer Fewell, 2015. "Social Biomimicry: what do ants and bees tell us about organization in the natural world?," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 207-216, October.

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