AG 1   Info

AG Audience

English

30 Minutes

Saarbrücken

Abstract: I will talk about my recent adventures with ants. Together with biologists we study P. longiconis "crazy" ants as they collaboratively transport a large food item to their nest. This collective navigation process is guided by pheromones which are laid by individual ants. Using a new methodology to detect scent marks, we identify a new kind of ant trail characterized by very short and dynamic pheromone markings and highly stochastic navigation response to them. We argue that such a trail can be highly beneficial in conditions in which knowledge of individual ants regarding the underlying topological structure is unreliable. This gives rise to a new theoretical search model under unreliable guiding instructions, which is of independent computational interest. To illustrate the model, imagine driving a car in an unknown country that is in the aftermath of a major hurricane which has randomly flipped a certain small fraction of the road-signs. Under such conditions of unreliability, how can you still reach your destination fast?

This talk is based on a recently published paper in eLife. It was done with biologists collaborators: Ofer Feinerman, Udi Fonio, Yael Heyman and Aviram Gelblum, and CS co-authors: Lucas Bockowski, Yoav Rodeh and Adrian Kosowski.

Emanuele Natale

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The talk will be more oriented to biologists.