Figure 3.
Information content of interactions. (a) Reactions of immobile non-recruiter ants to interactions with another non-recruiter (blue circles) or recruiter (green circles) ant moving at a given speed. (i) Fraction of immobile ants that start moving after the interaction. (ii) The speed of the immobile ants that became mobile after the interaction. The speed change depends on the speed of the ant contacted but not on whether this ant is a recruiter or not (n = 636 interactions). (b) Smoothed histograms of speed responses of immobile ants to an interaction with either a fast (more than 8 cm s−1; blue) or slow (less than 1 cm s−1; cyan) moving ant. Distribution means are specified by vertical lines and correspond to the data given in (ii) of (a). The two distributions are statistically different (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, p < 0.05). However, the large overlap makes the attribution of a single sample to one histogram or the other ambiguous.