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Published in:
2008 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
An Individual-Based Model of Task Selection in Honeybees
Authors : Thomas Schmickl, Karl Crailsheim
Published in: From Animals to Animats 10
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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Adaptive division of labour is one key characteristic of eusocial insect colonies and of high relevance in biology, ethology, swarm intelligence and robotics. We constructed an individual based model of division of labour in a honeybee colony. Our model incorporates distinct worker cohorts (foragers, storers, nurses), unemployed bees and larvae. Our goal was a model as accurate as possible, thus we implemented a heterogeneous environment, agents’ physiology and the flow of nutrients within the colony. In our model, the bees decide which task to choose, depending on the intensity of stimuli and on individual thresholds, which are modulated in response to task performance. We describe the main aspects of this model and demonstrate the stability of the emerging division of labour. The model predicts the energetic costs of sudden perturbations (removing/adding cohorts of workers of one task), as well as the resulting shifts in task cohort sizes.