Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Ant colonies outperform individuals when a sensory discrimination task is difficult but not when it is easy
“'Collective intelligence' and 'wisdom of crowds' refer to situations in which groups achieve more accurate perception and better decisions than solitary agents. Whether groups outperform individuals should depend on the kind of task and its difficulty, but the nature of this relationship remains unknown. Here we show that colonies of Temnothorax ants outperform individuals for a difficult perception task but that individuals do better than groups when the task is easy". Full article @ PNAS
