What is it about?
This article examines some of the major mechanisms contributing to the apparent collective intelligence of the honey bee swarm and determines their role in its nest site decision making process . It goes on to discuss the implications of these findings and how they relate to collective decision making by human groups .
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Why is it important?
Decision making by the honey bee swarm shows how massively parallel information processing , diversity generating mechanisms and numerous independent opinions can provide a relatively unbiased and noise free assessment of the comparative value of different alternatives . Differential net recruitment of support to the better quality alternatives can then aggregate evidence in their favour and a non intentional selection process can identify the best competing alternatives . Finally a quorum decision determines the best global alternative .
Perspectives
Collective decision making by the honey bee swarm is of particular interest because the mechanisms involved have undergone millions of years of testing during their evolution and have proved their viability . Decision making by human groups is still bedevilled by lack of diversity , insufficient independence of opinion , excessive noise and all pervading bias .
Dr Richard A Foss
Natural Systems Development
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Major Mechanisms Contributing to Swarm Intelligence, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, July 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/sres.2416.
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