Daniele Carlesso, Justin M. McNab, Christopher J. Lustri, Simon Garnier, and Chris R. Reid

PNAS 120 (29) e2216217120

Weaver ants link their bodies together to form chains over gaps and reach unexplored territories. The decision to join or leave a chain is made by individuals, but has cost implications at the colony level, as longer chains sequester more ants, which cannot perform other tasks. Furthermore, the payoff of a chain remains unknown until it is complete and the new area is explored. We demonstrate that individual ants modulate the time they spend in the chain based on their proximity to the ground and that this local behavioral rule caps the colony-level investment into chains. Our theoretical model offers insights into collective decision-making in the absence of payoff information, and could prove useful in the engineering of multiagent systems.

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