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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Anim Behav. 2013 Jul;86(1):197–207. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.05.012

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Diagram of the regulation of foraging behaviour in harvester ants. (a) Processes identified in the current study as occurring inside the nest vestibule. (b) Processes known from previous work to occur outside the nest. (1) Forager availability (numbers of ants) in the vestibule changes on the timescale of minutes. (2) An available forager’s decision whether to leave the nest depends on its interactions with returning foragers on the timescale of seconds. (3) Interactions of returning foragers with available foragers activate the available foragers. In addition, a returning forager can become an available forager once it drops off the food item it brought into the nest. (4) The rate at which foragers return to the nest depends on food availability.