Journal
FRONTIERS IN APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fams.2021.672773
Keywords
collective decision making; evidence accumulation model; social insects; dynamical systems; decision theory; collective cognition; drift diffusion model
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [648032, 770964]
- Minerva [712601]
- European Research Council (ERC) [770964] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Cooperative transport of large food loads by Paratrechina longicornis ants involves repeated decision-making processes, with carried loads exhibiting biased random walk behavior. This behavior reflects an emergent version of the psychophysical Weber's law. The variable step size of the carried loads expands the scope of the Evidence Accumulation model from isolated to sequential decisions.
Cooperative transport of large food loads by Paratrechina longicornis ants demands repeated decision-making. Inspired by the Evidence Accumulation (EA) model classically used to describe decision-making in the brain, we conducted a binary choice experiment where carrying ants rely on social information to choose between two paths. We found that the carried load performs a biased random walk that continuously alternates between the two options. We show that this motion constitutes a physical realization of the abstract EA model and exhibits an emergent version of the psychophysical Weber's law. In contrast to the EA model, we found that the load's random step size is not fixed but, rather, varies with both evidence and circumstances. Using theoretical modeling we show that variable step size expands the scope of the EA model from isolated to sequential decisions. We hypothesize that this phenomenon may also be relevant in neuronal circuits that perform sequential decisions.
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