Proximate mechanisms of efficient cooperative transport in ants

Cooperative transport occurs when a group of individuals work together to move an object in one piece. Using cooperative transport, some ant species can carry large food items such as birds, bats and snakes vertically up a tree trunk, while other species can only pull food in opposite directions, sometimes for hours. What enables some ant species to perform well at cooperative transport? I hypothesize that persistence and intragroup variation in persistence modulates transport efficiency. Persistence is the likelihood that ants participating in a transport effort will alter their behavior in response to the behavior of others in the group. I model the effect of persistence and other behavioral parameters on cooperative transport efficiency in ants, and compare simulations with these behavioral parameters to experimental data from both efficient and inefficient ant species. This work sets the stage for a better understanding of the behavioral rules that lead to efficient cooperative transport in ants, and cooperative behavior more generally.