Exploration adjustment Ants determine their next move at rest

Abstract

To find useful work to do for their colony, individual eusocial animals have to move, somehow staying attentive to relevant social information. Recent research on individual Temnothorax albipennis ants moving inside their colony’s nest found a power-law relationship between a movement’s duration and its average speed, and a universal speed profile for movements showing that they mostly fluctuate around a constant average speed.