IT for Innovative Educational Environments: Exploring, Authoring and Programming

The paper presents a novel approach based on using a single educational environment to achieve various methods for supporting educational activities – exploring prebuilt learning modules, using authoring tools to create educational modules and programming activities. This approach builds a solid foundation for subject-neutral and multidisciplinary applications and utilized modern IT techniques like virtual reality, interactivity and explorativity

Landmarks and ant search strategies after interrupted tandem runs

© 2014. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd. During a tandem run, a single leading ant recruits a single follower to an important resource such as a new nest. To examine this process, we used a motorized gantry, which has not previously been used in ant studies, to track tandem running ants accurately in a large arena and we compared their performance in the presence of different types of landmark. We interrupted tandem runs by taking away the leader and moved a large distant landmark behind the new nest just at the time of this separation. Our aim was to determine what information followers might have obtained from the incomplete tandem run they had followed, and how they behaved after the tandem run had been interrupted. Our results show that former followers search by using composite random strategies with elements of sub-diffusive and diffusive movements. Furthermore, when we provided more landmarks former followers searched for longer. However, when all landmarks were removed completely from the arena, the ants' search duration lasted up to four times longer. Hence, their search strategy changes in the presence or absence of landmarks. Even after extensive search of this kind, former followers headed back to their old nest but did not return along the path of the tandem run they had followed. The combination of the position to which the large distant landmark behind the new nest was moved and the presence or absence of additional landmarks influenced the orientation of the former followers' paths back to the old nest. We also found that these ants exhibit behavioural lateralization in which they possibly use their right eye more than their left eye to recognize landmarks for navigation. Our results suggest that former follower ants learn landmarks during tandem running and use this information to make strategic decisions

A social mechanism facilitates ant colony emigrations overdifferent distances

Behavioural responses enable animals to react rapidly to fluctuating environments. In eusocial organisms, such changes are often enacted at the group level, but may be organised in a decentralised fashion by the actions of individuals. However, the contributions of different group members are rarely homogeneous, and there is evidence to suggest that certain ‘keystone’ individuals are important in shaping collective responses. Accordingly, investigations of the dynamics and structuring of behavioural changes at both the group and individual level are crucial for evaluating the relative influence of different individuals. Here, we examined the composition of tandem running behaviour during colony emigrations in the ant species Temnothorax albipennis. Tandem running is modulated in response to emigration distance, with more runs being conducted when a more distant nest site must be reached. We show that certain individuals are highly active in the tandem running process, attempting significantly more work in thetask. Contrary to expectations, however, such individuals are in fact no more successful at conducting tandem runs than their less active nest mates. Instead, it seems that when more tandem runs are required, colonies rely on greater recruitment of workers into the process. The implications of our study are that in some cases, even when apparently ‘key’ individuals exist within a group, their relative contribution to task performance may be far from decisive

Spatial effects, sampling errors, and task specialization in the honey bee

Task allocation patterns should depend on the spatial distribution of work within the nest, variation in task demand, and the movement patterns of workers, however, relatively little research has focused on these topics. This study uses a spatially explicit agent based model to determine whether such factors alone can generate biases in task performance at the individual level in the honey bees, Apis mellifera. Specialization (bias in task performance) is shown to result from strong sampling error due to localized task demand, relatively slow moving workers relative to nest size, and strong spatial variation in task demand. To date, specialization has been primarily interpreted with the response threshold concept, which is focused on intrinsic (typically genotypic) differences between workers. Response threshold variation and sampling error due to spatial effects are not mutually exclusive, however, and this study suggests that both contribute to patterns of task bias at the individual level. While spatial effects are strong enough to explain some documented cases of specialization; they are relatively short term and not explanatory for long term cases of specialization. In general, this study suggests that the spatial layout of tasks and fluctuations in their demand must be explicitly controlled for in studies focused on identifying genotypic specialists

Evolution of self-organized division of labor in a response threshold model

Division of labor in social insects is determinant to their ecological success. Recent models emphasize that division of labor is an emergent property of the interactions among nestmates obeying to simple behavioral rules. However, the role of evolution in shaping these rules has been largely neglected. Here, we investigate a model that integrates the perspectives of self-organization and evolution. Our point of departure is the response threshold model, where we allow thresholds to evolve. We ask whether the thresholds will evolve to a state where division of labor emerges in a form that fits the needs of the colony. We find that division of labor can indeed evolve through the evolutionary branching of thresholds, leading to workers that differ in their tendency to take on a given task. However, the conditions under which division of labor evolves depend on the strength of selection on the two fitness components considered: amount of work performed and on worker distribution over tasks. When selection is strongest on the amount of work performed, division of labor evolves if switching tasks is costly. When selection is strongest on worker distribution, division of labor is less likely to evolve. Furthermore, we show that a biased distribution (like 3:1) of workers over tasks is not easily achievable by a threshold mechanism, even under strong selection. Contrary to expectation, multiple matings of colony foundresses impede the evolution of specialization. Overall, our model sheds light on the importance of considering the interaction between specific mechanisms and ecological requirements to better understand the evolutionary scenarios that lead to division of labor in complex systems

Within-group behavioral variation promotes biased task performance and the emergence of a defensive caste in a social spider

The social spider Anelosimus studiosus exhibits a behavioral polymorphism where colony members express either a passive, tolerant behavioral tendency (social) or an aggressive, intolerant behavioral tendency (asocial). Here we test whether asocial individuals act as colony defenders by deflecting the suite of foreign (i.e., heterospecific) spider species that commonly exploit multi-female colonies. We (1) determined whether the phenotypic composition of colonies is associated with foreign spider abundance, (2) tested whether heterospecific spider abundance and diversity affect colony survival in the field, and (3) performed staged encounters between groups of A. studiosus and their colony-level predator Agelenopsis emertoni (A. emertoni)to determine whether asocial females exhibit more defensive behavior. We found that larger colonies harbor more foreign spiders, and the number of asocial colony members was negatively associated with foreign spider abundance. Additionally, colony persistence was negatively associated with the abundance and diversity of foreign spiders within colonies. In encounters with a colony-level predator, asocial females were more likely to exhibit escalatory behavior, and this might explain the negative association between the frequency of asocial females and the presence of foreign spider associates. Together, our results indicate that foreign spiders are detrimental to colony survival, and that asocial females play a defensive role in multi-female colonies

Ants in a Labyrinth: A Statistical Mechanics Approach to the Division of Labour

Division of labour (DoL) is a fundamental organisational principle in human societies, within virtual and robotic swarms and at all levels of biological organisation. DoL reaches a pinnacle in the insect societies where the most widely used model is based on variation in response thresholds among individuals, and the assumption that individuals and stimuli are well-mixed. Here, we present a spatially explicit model of DoL. Our model is inspired by Pierre de Gennes' 'Ant in a Labyrinth' which laid the foundations of an entire new field in statistical mechanics. We demonstrate the emergence, even in a simplified one-dimensional model, of a spatial patterning of individuals and a right-skewed activity distribution, both of which are characteristics of division of labour in animal societies. We then show using a two-dimensional model that the work done by an individual within an activity bout is a sigmoidal function of its response threshold. Furthermore, there is an inverse relationship between the overall stimulus level and the skewness of the activity distribution. Therefore, the difference in the amount of work done by two individuals with different thresholds increases as the overall stimulus level decreases. Indeed, spatial fluctuations of task stimuli are minimised at these low stimulus levels. Hence, the more unequally labour is divided amongst individuals, the greater the ability of the colony to maintain homeostasis. Finally, we show that the non-random spatial distribution of individuals within biological and social systems could be caused by indirect (stigmergic) interactions, rather than direct agent-to-agent interactions. Our model links the principle of DoL with principles in the statistical mechanics and provides testable hypotheses for future experiments

Thermal fracture as a framework for quasi-static crack propagation

We address analytically and numerically the problem of crack path prediction in the model system of a crack propagating under thermal loading. We show that one can explain the instability from a straight to a wavy crack propagation by using only the principle of local symmetry and the Griffith criterion. We then argue that the calculations of the stress intensity factors can be combined with the standard crack propagation criteria to obtain the evolution equation for the crack tip within any loading configuration. The theoretical results of the thermal crack problem agree with the numerical simulations we performed using a phase field model. Moreover, it turns out that the phase-field model allows to clarify the nature of the transition between straight and oscillatory cracks which is shown to be supercritical.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure

NURBS distance fields for extremely curved cracks

This paper presents the first methodology that combines a meshless method and the exact representation of cracks using Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS). The methodology consists on developing an enrichment function based on distance functions to NURBS curves.The examples show the potential of the proposed approach and demonstrate the applicability to problems involving complex cracks that appear in sol-gel films