The influence of contact rates on the efficiency (the ability to exploit a profitable environment) and flexibilty (the ability to track a changing environment) of foraging in ants is studied theoretically in the case where foraging relies on a mixture of group and mass recruitment. It is shown...

Army ant colonies display complex foraging raid patterns involving thousands of individuals communicating through chemical trails. In this paper we explore, by means of a simple search algorithm, the properties of these trails in order to test the hypothesis that their structure reflects an...