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Consensus or Deadlock? Consequences of Simple Behavioral Rules for Coordination in Group Decisions.
Helen F McCreery1, Nikolaus Correll2, Michael D Breed1
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America.
Plos One
|September 30, 2016
Summary
Groups can reach consensus on direction, even with limited information. Simple rules, like knowing majority alignment, help break deadlocks and improve collective transport efficiency.
Area of Science:
- Collective Behavior
- Animal Behavior
- Mathematical Modeling
Background:
- Coordinated collective behaviors often arise from simple individual interaction rules.
- Cooperative transport in ants presents a complex challenge requiring directional consensus.
Purpose of the Study:
- To model ant coordination during cooperative transport.
- To determine if simple behavioral rules enable consensus with minimal information.
- To investigate factors influencing coordination and deadlock resolution.
Main Methods:
- Developed deterministic and stochastic models of ant behavior.
- Investigated three types of behavioral rules based on information availability (none, success measurement, majority alignment).
- Analyzed feedback mechanisms and decision-making based on relative group sizes.
Main Results:
- Groups break deadlocks only when individuals abandon tasks against the majority (informed rule).
- Coordination success relies on measuring relative group sizes for feedback.
- Consensus is faster with shared bias, high sensitivity, or tuned persistence.
Conclusions:
- Simple, informed behavioral rules allow groups to break symmetry and reach consensus.
- These findings generalize to other collective decision-making scenarios with deadlocks.
- Minimal information and simple rules are sufficient for effective collective transport.
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