Elucidating Soldier and Worker Caste Divisions in an Animat Artificial Life Model

Complex systems such as termite colonies have a macroscopically rich set of emergent behaviours that are thought to emerge solely from microscopic and simple individual agent behaviours. The effect of different castes of termite on the success of a system as a whole is a subtle effect that is difficult to describe analytically, but which can be explored using simulation techniques. We explore the effect of differentiating worker and soldier castes in a predatorprey based animat-agent model. We describe our simulation model and its implementation. The core model comprising a well-established set of microcscopic rules and behavioural priorities normally exhibits statistically predictable boombust phenomena with population booms of the predators lagging those of prey. Introducing soldier and worker castes amongst predators can exacerbate and exaggerate the normal model properties. We present results showing the relative advantages to a termite community of having varying proportions of s...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: GEM
• Authors: Chris Scogings, Kenneth A. Hawick
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, GEM 2010, Model, Simple Individual Agent, Termite