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Ants also have a risk-management algorithm and can be compared to businesses. Their business model is to send ants out of the nest and bring back calories, wate

Ants also have a risk-management algorithm and can be compared to businesses. Their business model is to send ants out of the nest and bring back calories, water and protein. These resources are then turned into more ants. In the most ideal case, this is an exponential growth curve. But "investing" in a new food source, meaning to send out a fraction of the capital to get more revenue, is also risky. There are predators, rain and heat. Would be tough luck on a colony, if they send out half the ants at the same time and then some hungry predator just feeds off the ant street. So the ants do have some sort of risk management algorithm. I don't know how it works completely, but essentially the decision to send out workers is influenced by the amount of workers in the nest and the frequency of ants coming back with a "profit". As with any well managed portfolio and a little bit of luck, the growth curve then is exponential, while not exactly crazy, and the end result after a few years is a prosperous colony, having accumulated so much capital, that they don't know how to spend it on growing themselves. That's when they start to spawn a new generation of ant queens, which is a horrendously wasteful and expensive exercise, but all of these newly mated ant queens, if she survives the first few days, will go into stealth-mode and found her own startup colony.

Someone 13y ago
I think there also is a limit to growth. If population density gets to high, the average ant has to walk so far for food that getting food costs more energy than the food brings in.
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  There seems to be a an intellectual reflex that whenever the topic of exponential growth comes up, people have to bring up growth limits and population density... In this case though, I don't think that resource limits apply that much. Individual ants feed each other, so they can survive quite long periods without food, and they don't grow much beyond carrying capacity. If circumstances change, they can do a "soft landing" by downsizing the colony slowly or even moving the colony. In fact, colony size seems to be most often limited by burning off excess capital in sexual broods. Compared with most other insects, ants are actually much worse at building up biomass. But the queen ant's survival is actually safer because the colony manages risk and growth.

Someone 13y ago

I think there also is a limit to growth. If population density gets to high, the average ant has to walk so far for food that getting food costs more energy than the food brings in.

bayesianhorse 13y ago
There seems to be a an intellectual reflex that whenever the topic of exponential growth comes up, people have to bring up growth limits and population density... In this case though, I don't think that resource limits apply that much. Individual ants feed each other, so they can survive quite long periods without food, and they don't grow much beyond carrying capacity. If circumstances change, they can do a "soft landing" by downsizing the colony slowly or even moving the colony. In fact, colony size seems to be most often limited by burning off excess capital in sexual broods. Compared with most other insects, ants are actually much worse at building up biomass. But the queen ant's survival is actually safer because the colony manages risk and growth.