It's not a bug, it's an hymenoptera! As a comic in all seriousness, though, I would imagine any search strategy that avoids a local maximum could be useful, su

It's not a bug, it's an hymenoptera! As a comic in all seriousness, though, I would imagine any search strategy that avoids a local maximum could be useful, such as other siblings have pointed out. But I wonder if the ants even have a way of detecting they are trapped in a local maximum. If the signal detection is simply based on the strength of the signal, I don't know how they could detect the trap. If the pheromones of each ant were somewhat different, and if ants have memory -- maybe that's what would be required. Otherwise if all ants just take random walks deviating from the signal, would you expect them to become isolated, or simply form a more elaborate ant mill whose position changes until the path to the nest is found or they become exhausted?