Trail pheromones do more than simply guide social insect workers from point A to point B.
Recent research has revealed additional ways in which they help to regulate colony …

Copying others can greatly improve individual fitness and is fundamental for the
organisation of societies. Yet in some situations it is better to ignore social information and …

Many animals, including humans, acquire valuable skills and knowledge by copying others.
Scientists refer to this as social learning. It is one of the most exciting and rapidly develo** …

On studying strategy update rules in the framework of evolutionary game theory, one can
differentiate between imitation processes and aspiration-driven dynamics. In the former …

The distribution of food resources in space and time is likely to be an important factor
governing the type of foraging strategy used by ants. However, no previous systematic …

Urbanisation alters biodiversity patterns and threatens to disrupt mutualistic interactions.
Aside from pollination, however, little is known about how mutualisms change in cities. Our …

Ants are central place foragers and use multiple information sources to navigate between
the nest and feeding sites. Individual ants rapidly learn a route, and often prioritize memory …

Insect societies integrate many information sources to organize collective activities such as
foraging. Many ants use trail pheromones to guide foragers to food sources, but foragers can …

Unlike most desert-dwelling animals, Cataglyphis ants do not attempt to escape the heat;
rather, they apply their impressive heat tolerance to avoid competitors and predators. This …

Cooperative transport, defined as multiple individuals simultaneously moving an object, has
arisen many times in ants, but is otherwise extremely rare in animals. Here we review the …