What is it about?
This study shows that ants work like a “liquid brain” — a system with no leader or command center. Instead, coordination comes from constant interactions among many individuals, creating what scientists call collective intelligence. To test this, researchers set up a large maze (2 × 2 meters) where ants could search for and bring back food together. They found that each ant tended to move in one of two ways: either walking in straight lines (scouts) or moving with frequent turns (recruits). Using a model, the research team showed that these two movement styles are key to how the whole colony decides whether to explore for new food sources or focus on collecting food already found.
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Why is it important?
This study shows that, outside the nest, ants need strategies to share information and respond to the colony’s needs. Inside the nest, ants stay close together and can easily interact. Outside, however, only a small fraction of the colony ventures out, making encounters rarer and more difficult. To cope with this, movement plays an essential role, linking food sources with groups of ants ready to act. Scouts are quick to find food, while recruits form “ready-to-go” teams that can rapidly be informed and help collect it. The balance between scouts and recruits is therefore crucial for the colony’s efficiency, shaping its decision to either explore new resources or exploit those already found.
Perspectives
For me, this was a very engaging piece of work that brings attention to movement and individual preferences. Too often, social collectives are treated as an “average unit” that performs relatively "well" or "poorly". This study shows instead that individual preferences can have a collective impact, which is ultimately context-dependent: having different possible behaviors makes collective systems more flexible and adaptable. From my perspective, it also places movement at the center of cognition: animals need to move to exchange information, and how they move is key to understanding how that information is shared.
Pol Fernández-López
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Foraging ants as liquid brains: Movement heterogeneity shapes collective efficiency, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2506930122.
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