A Simple Threshold Rule Is Sufficient to Explain Sophisticated Collective Decision-Making
Figure 6
Analytical results of Markov Chain model.
Expected time for an ant to accept any site across varying qualities of site A, calculated from equation 2. Dashed line: only site A present. Solid line: two nests present; site B fixed at P(accept nest B) = 0.88 (estimated from data, see Text S1, Fig. S1). For two nests present, either site is equally likely to be discovered first. Nest rediscovery probability r = 0.7 (estimated from data, see Text S1, Table S1). The reduced effect of site A's quality on expected decision time is robust to variations in site B's quality, except where this becomes low (see Fig. S1).