Dear Answer Person, I apologize for my long absence, but I have been most busy and I have been trying to devise a worthy challenge for you. One day, I happened to disturb an ant colony; swarms of ants naturally stormed out of the colony; what was most curious was that their defensive/search movements seem to follow an organized but complex pattern. Does there exist any research on modeling ant defense movement? And if so, what’s the current/most researched model? I thank you so much for what you’ve done. Sincerely, AJL, Class of 2009. [3343A]
A simple literature search in a database such as Biological Abstracts indicates some research in this area. Just one example would be this article regarding one species of ant defending against another species, “Combat between large derived societies: A subterranean army ant established as a predator of mature leaf-cutting ant colonies” by Powell & Clark (Insectes Sociaux. 2004; 51(4): 342-351). The authors discuss strategies used by the defending ants, such as “Lancaster’s Linear Law of Combat.” Also: “Do Lanchester’s laws of combat describe competition in ants?” by McGlynn (Behavioral Ecology Vol. 11 No. 6: 686-690); and “Ant defence system: A mechanism organizing individual responses into efficient collective behavior” by Sakata & Katayama (Ecological Research. 2001; 16(3): 395-403). It’s unclear to AP whether ants will use these same strategies against humans.