Behavioural variation among workers promotes feed-forward loops in a simulated insect colony

Abstract

Coordinated responses in eusocial insect colonies arise from worker interaction networks that enable collective processing of ecologically relevant information. Previous studies have detected a structural motif in these networks known as the feed-forward loop, which functions to process information in other biological regulatory networks (e.g. transcriptional networks). However, the processes that generate feed-forward loops among workers and the consequences for information flow within the colony remain largely unexplored. We constructed an agent-based model to investigate how individual variation in activity and movement shaped the production of feed-forward loops in a simulated insect colony. We hypothesized that individual variation along these axes would generate feed-forward loops by driving variation in interaction frequency among workers. We found that among-individual variation in activity drove over-representation of feed-forward loops in the interaction networks by determining the directionality of interactions. However, despite previous work linking feed-forward loops with efficient information transfer, activity variation did not promote faster or more efficient information flow, thus providing no support for the hypothesis that feed-forward loops reflect selection for enhanced collective functioning. Conversely, individual variation in movement trajectory, despite playing no role in generating feed-forward loops, promoted fast and efficient information flow by linking together otherwise unconnected regions of the nest.