For the past three decades Deborah Gordon has devoted herself to studying ant colonies in the Arizona desert. Although her chosen subject – the red harvester ant – isn’t much to look at, when they ...

Scientists found that ants and other natural systems use optimization algorithms similar to those used by engineered systems, including the Internet. These algorithms invest incrementally more ...

This behavior has inspired algorithms used in computer science and logistics, often called ant colony optimization. These algorithms help solve problems like routing delivery trucks, scheduling ...

Ants coordinate highly complex foraging and traffic systems without any leaders, relying entirely on local interactions and chemical cues. Pheromone trails encode information about distance, food ...