Seeking and sharing information in collective olfactory search

Abstract

Abstract Searching for a target is a task of fundamental importance for many living organisms. Long-distance search guided by olfactory cues is a prototypical example of such a process. The searcher receives signals that are sparse and very noisy, making the task extremely difficult. Information-seeking strategies have thus been proven to be effective for individual olfactory search and their extension to collective search has been the subject of some exploratory studies. Here, we study in detail how sharing information among members of a group affects the search behavior when agents adopt information-seeking strategies as Infotaxis and its recently introduced variant, Space-Aware Infotaxis. Our results show that even in absence of explicit coordination, sharing information leads to an effective partitioning of the search space among agents that results in a significant decrease of mean search times.