Ant System is a general purpose heuristic algorithm inspired by the foraging behavior of real ant colonies. Here we introduce an improved version of Ant System, that we called MAX{ MIN Ant System. We describe the new features present in MAX{MIN Ant System, make a detailed experimental investigation on the contribution of the design choices to the improved performance and give computational resu...

Ant System is a general purpose heuristic algorithm inspired by the foraging behavior of real ant colonies. Here we introduce an improved version of Ant System, that we called MAX{ MIN Ant System. We describe the new features present in MAX{MIN Ant System, make a detailed experimental investigation on the contribution of the design choices to the improved performance and give computational resu...

—Weekly reports of the abundance of the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, in 69 households for 18 mo (1/98–7/99) in the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California were compared with weather data. Ant abundance inside homes was highest in cold rainy weather, and there was a second smaller peak of ant abundance in hot dry weather. Pesticide use in the home decreased ant abundance, from one we...

Argentine ant invasion changed colour-polymorphic composition of ant-mimetic jumping spider Myrmarachne in southwestern Japan. In Argentine ant-free sites, most of Myrmarachne exhibited all-blackish colouration. In Argentine ant-infested sites, on the other hand, blackish morph decreased, and bicoloured (i.e. partly bright-coloured) morphs increased in dominance. Invasive Argentine ant drives a...

In 1995, an antibiotic (ANT) was used in starter, grower, and withdrawal (WD) feeds by 94.3, 98.2, and 75.1% of broiler production units, but by 2000, ANT use had declined to 64.8, 66.9, and 48.1% respectively. Roxarsone (ROX) was used in the starter and grower feeds by 69.8 and 73.9% of production units. Bacitracin (BAC) was used more frequently than other antibiotics in the starter and grower...

The concept of ‘ant mosaics’ has been established to describe the structure of arboreal ant communities in plantations and other relatively simple forest systems. It is essentially built upon the existence of negative and positive associations between ant species plus the concept of dominance hierarchies. Whether this concept can be applied to ant communities in more complex mature tropical rai...

Context: Emergence is a term used to describe complex patterns or systems which are formed from very basic rules or agents. Once such example which has intrigued scientists across several fields has been ant colonies. Computer scientists are particularly interested in ant colonies as although each individual ant acts in a very simple manor, the ant colony as a whole is able to find shortest pat...