Fig 1. The simplified model.

(A) Ants encounter an obstacle during cooperative transport. Dashed line indicates the pheromone scent trail that passes beneath the leaf. Solid line indicates an alternative route. The leaf obstructs the direct route to the nest, and the cargo can not be passed along the original scent trail. Bottom left inset shows a previously studied obstacle [21, 22, 24] that resemble this natural scenario. (B) Ants carrying a circular cargo along a confined linear obstacle with an opening. Blue line is a 16 minute trajectory. The sketched part of the obstacle indicates the true proportions of the enclosed frame. (C) An illustration of the simplified one dimensional model. G is the number of informed ants, that are modeled as a restoring force and v is the velocity the cargo. Ant color index: Blue—lifter, red—puller, informed ants are represented by the force $\overrightarrow{G}$. (D) The restoring force due to the informed ants in the 2D case. Left inset compares between the projection of the restoring force for a two dimensional cargo along the x axis, and the restoring force of the continuous function we used in the simplified model for ϵ = 1 and r = 1 (Eq (9)). The restoring force is normalized by f₀. Ant color index: Blue—lifter, red—puller, black—informed.