ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Foraging ants as liquid brains: Movement heterogeneity shapes collective efficiency.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Delay-Induced Hopf Bifurcation and Entropy-Based Distributional Uncertainty in a Stochastic Time-Delay Pheromone Feedback Model of Ant Foraging Dynamics.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Foraging ants as liquid brains: Movement heterogeneity shapes collective efficiency.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
Liquid brains conceptualize living systems that operate without central control, where collective outcomes emerge from local and dynamic interactions. This concept extends beyond ants and other social insects to include immune systems, slime molds, and microbiomes. In such systems, connectivity scales with population density, facilitating more efficient information transfer as group size increases. However, in sparse conditions, where fewer individuals interact, movement likely plays a crucial role in shaping connectivity, ensuring optimal collective efficiency. We tested this hypothesis during the foraging process of
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