Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Optimal Foraging

Optimal Foraging

How animals obtain and eat their food is called foraging behavior. Foraging can include searching for plants and hunting for prey and depends on the species and environment.

Symbiosis

Symbiosis

Symbiotic relationships are long-term, close interactions between individuals of different species that affect the distribution and abundance of those species. When a relationship is beneficial to both species, this is called mutualism. When the relationship is beneficial to one species but neither beneficial nor harmful to the other species, this is called commensalism. When one organism is harmed to benefit another, the relationship is known as parasitism. These types of relationships often...

Competition

Competition

When organisms require the same limited resources within an environment, they may have to compete for them. Competition is a net-negative interaction. Even if two competing individuals or populations do not interact directly, the overall fitness of both competitors is lowered as a result of not having full access to the limited resource.

Ecological Niches

Ecological Niches

All organisms have a position within an ecosystem. The complete set of living and nonliving factors—including food resources, climate, and terrain—that define the position of a given organism are collectively referred to as the organism’s ecological niche.

Predator-Prey Interactions

Predator-Prey Interactions

Predators consume prey for energy. Predators that acquire prey and prey that avoid predation both increase their chances of survival and reproduction (i.e., fitness). Routine predator-prey interactions elicit mutual adaptations that improve predator offenses, such as claws, teeth, and speed, as well as prey defenses, including crypsis, aposematism, and mimicry. Thus, predator-prey interactions resemble an evolutionary arms race.

Migration

Migration

Migration is long-range, seasonal movement from one region or habitat to another. This common strategy, carried out by many different organisms around the world, is an adaptive response that typically corresponds to changes in an organism’s environment, like resource availability or climate. Migrations can involve huge groups of thousands of animals as well as single individuals traveling alone and can range from thousands of kilometers to just a few hundred meters.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Latent layers in social networks and their implications for comparative analyses.

Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology·2025

Same author

Improving computer vision for plant pathology through advanced training techniques.

Applications in plant sciences·2025

Same author

Ecology needs a causal overhaul.

Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·2025

Same author

Strong and weak environmental perturbations cause contrasting restructure of ant transportation networks.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2025

Same author

Tailoring convolutional neural networks for custom botanical data.

Applications in plant sciences·2025

Same author

Random walks with spatial and temporal resets can explain individual and colony-level searching patterns in ants.

Journal of the Royal Society, Interface·2024

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 14, 2026

Collection and Long-Term Maintenance of Leaf-Cutting Ants (Atta) in Laboratory Conditions

Collection and Long-Term Maintenance of Leaf-Cutting Ants (Atta) in Laboratory Conditions

Published on: August 30, 2022

Exploration versus exploitation in polydomous ant colonies.

Zoe Cook¹, Daniel W Franks, Elva J H Robinson

¹York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK. zc505@york.ac.uk

Journal of Theoretical Biology

|February 6, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Polydomous ant colonies, with multiple nests, can improve resource discovery, especially in dispersed environments. However, their success depends on balancing recruitment with colony organization and size.

More Related Videos

Induction and Evaluation of Inbreeding Crosses Using the Ant, Vollenhovia Emeryi

Induction and Evaluation of Inbreeding Crosses Using the Ant, Vollenhovia Emeryi

Published on: October 5, 2018

A Visual Guide for Studying Behavioral Defenses to Pathogen Attacks in Leaf-Cutting Ants

A Visual Guide for Studying Behavioral Defenses to Pathogen Attacks in Leaf-Cutting Ants

Published on: October 12, 2018

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 14, 2026

Collection and Long-Term Maintenance of Leaf-Cutting Ants (Atta) in Laboratory Conditions

Collection and Long-Term Maintenance of Leaf-Cutting Ants (Atta) in Laboratory Conditions

Published on: August 30, 2022

Induction and Evaluation of Inbreeding Crosses Using the Ant, Vollenhovia Emeryi

Induction and Evaluation of Inbreeding Crosses Using the Ant, Vollenhovia Emeryi

Published on: October 5, 2018

A Visual Guide for Studying Behavioral Defenses to Pathogen Attacks in Leaf-Cutting Ants

A Visual Guide for Studying Behavioral Defenses to Pathogen Attacks in Leaf-Cutting Ants

Published on: October 12, 2018

Area of Science:

Behavioral Ecology
Computational Biology
Social Insect Behavior

Background:

Social foraging species share resource information, enhancing foraging success.
Ant colonies balance exploiting known resources with searching for new ones.
Polydomy, where colonies inhabit multiple nests, is a common social organization.

Purpose of the Study:

To compare the foraging success of monodomous and polydomous ant colonies.
To investigate the impact of recruitment strategies and food environments on colony organization.
To determine the conditions under which polydomy is advantageous.

Main Methods:

An agent-based model was developed to simulate ant colony foraging.
The model incorporated recruitment via pheromone trails and group foraging dynamics.
Simulations compared monodomous and polydomous colony performance across varied food landscapes.

Main Results:

Polydomous colonies exhibited higher resource discovery rates, particularly in highly dispersed food environments.
Limitations in recruitment success due to nest decentralization can reduce the relative advantage of polydomy.
Monodomous colonies demonstrated higher foraging efficiency in exploiting food resources more rapidly.

Conclusions:

Polydomy is not universally superior; its benefits are context-dependent.
The interplay between recruitment strategy, colony size, and colony organization (monodomy vs. polydomy) is crucial for foraging efficiency.
Findings challenge previous assumptions, highlighting the nuanced advantages of different colony structures in social insects.