[gizmo686]

Interesting, but as I understand the article, ants also use a TCP like protocol to make sure that make sure they don't send to many ants to a given food source. It sounds like the system you are describing would strengthen the trail until the food ran dry, regardless of if there are already more ants at the food than can take a piece at a given time.

Also, I remember learning about the pheromone trail years ago as established fact, so I'm pretty sure they are talking about a different system. It would be interesting to look at how the two interact (along with the other systems they use we have yet to discover).

[xi]

You are right, now that I read the original article, it appears the particular ant genus they were studying does not use pheromone trails. Since this ant species gather seeds which are scattered by wind and could be brought back by a single ant, they don't need to build paths to the food source. Instead a returning ant interacts with other ants which are ready to leave and the rate at which ants leave the nest grows with the rate at which ants return back (so a leaving ant is a data packet, a returning ant is an ACK packet).

The paper: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...