Task Allocation Without Instructions
How ants decide what to do without being told
The Task Allocation Problem
Ant colonies face a challenge familiar to any organization: how to distribute workers across different tasks - foragers, patrollers, nest maintenance, midden workers, brood care. The proportions needed change constantly.
In human organizations, a manager would reassign workers. In ant colonies, no such manager exists.
Gordon's Discovery: Interaction Rates
Ants switch tasks based on the rate of interactions with other ants doing those tasks. Local encounter rates encode global demand.
- An ant performing task A encounters other ants
- She detects their task by their odor
- If she frequently encounters ants doing task B, she may switch
- If she rarely encounters ants doing task A, she may leave
Task Switching Thresholds
Not all ants are equally likely to switch tasks. Some switch easily (low threshold), some are stubborn (high threshold). This variation is crucial for colony stability.
The mix creates stable yet adaptive behavior. If all ants had low thresholds, the colony would oscillate wildly. If all had high thresholds, the colony couldn't adapt.
Key Concepts
"The task an ant is performing depends not on any property of the individual ant, but on what the ant has experienced recently."
Summary
Ants switch tasks based on interaction rates with other ants, not instructions. Each ant has individual response thresholds, and this population variance creates stable yet adaptive behavior. Task allocation is probabilistic, not deterministic.