I agree this is likely. In the ants example, I would expect a certain amount of pheromone to be the trigger, not an actual number of ants. And this could be dem

I agree this is likely. In the ants example, I would expect a certain amount of pheromone to be the trigger, not an actual number of ants. And this could be demonstrated by introducing pheromone without additional ants (a trivial example) or observing differences dependent on, for example, weather conditions impacting pheromone detectability and therefore colony behavior, while obviously not impacting the number of ants.