Robot helps uncover how ants pass on knowledge

Scientists have developed a small robot to understand how ants teach each other.

The team built the robot to mimic the behavior of rock ants using one-on-one tutoring, where an ant that has discovered a much better new nest can teach another person the way to get there.

The results, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology confirm today that most of the important elements of teaching in these ants are now understood because the teaching ant can be replaced by a machine.

The key to this learning process is tandem walking, where one ant literally leads another ant very slowly along a route to the new nest. The student ant learns the way so well that it finds its way home on its own and then does a tandem run with another ant to the new nest, and so on.

Prof Nigel Franks of the Bristol School of Biological Sciences said: “Teaching is so important in our own lives that we spend a lot of time either teaching others or teaching ourselves. human animals. Indeed, the first instance in which teaching was rigorously demonstrated in another animal was in an ant.” The team wanted to determine what is necessary and sufficient in such teaching. If they could build a robot that successfully replaces the teacher, it should show that they have largely understood all the essential elements in this process.

The researchers built a large arena so that there was a significant distance between the ants’ old nest, which was intentionally low quality, and a new, much better nest to which the ants could be guided by a robot. A scaffold was placed on top of the arena, which moved back and forth with a small gliding robot attached to it, allowing the scientists to direct the robot to move along either straight or undulating routes. Attractive worker ant scent glands have been attached to the robot to give it the pheromones of an ant teacher.

Prof. Franks explains: “We waited for an ant to leave the old nest and placed the robotic pen, adorned with attractive pheromones, right in front of it, beautifully winding. We had to allow the robot to be interrupted on its journey by us so we could wait for the following ant to catch up after looking around to learn landmarks.”

“Once the tracker ant was guided to the new nest by the robot, we allowed it to examine the new nest and then, on its own time, begin its journey home. We then automatically used the portal to track the path of the returning ant.”

The team found that the robot had actually successfully taught the apprentice ant the route. The ants knew the way back to the old nest, no matter whether they had taken a winding path or a straight one.

Prof Franks explained: “A straight path might be faster, but a winding path would provide more time in which the following ant could better learn landmarks so that it could find its way home as efficiently as if it were on a straight path.” been.”

“Crucially, we were able to compare the performance of the ants the robot had taught to those we had carried to the new nest site, which had no opportunity to learn the route. The taught ants found their way home much more quickly and successfully.”

The experiments were conducted by undergraduate Jacob Podesta, who is now a Ph.D. student in York, and Edward Jarvis, who was also a masters student in Professor Nigel Franks’ laboratory. Gantry programming was done by Dr. Alan Worley and all statistical analyzes were performed by Dr. Conducted by Ana Sendova-Franks.

Her approach should make it possible to further question what constitutes successful teaching.