Social insects with memory

Abstract.

The paper presents a mathematical model to investigate the collective behaviour of an ant colony when memory of the ants interferes with the usual interaction between individuals. The approach is developed in the framework of a simple situation consisting in tandem recruitment in a population of conservative ants, but it is susceptible to be applied also to a wider range of problems. The principle of the method is inspired by the work of Leuthäusser and Tarazona who developed the correspondence between a model for macromolecular time evolution and the equilibrium statistical mechanics of a higher-dimensional Ising system.