Material Flow, Task Partition, and Self-Organization in Wasp Societies

Insect societies are a prime model system to investigate the processes of homeostasis, self-organization and the emergent properties of complex systems. Using both top-down and bottom-up modeling techniques, we show here how effective a simple regulatory mechanism (we name it “common stomach regulation”) can be in sustaining the stability of the system in these societies. Wasp societies are resilient to external perturbations and they quickly adjust their workforce to compensate or to establish new equilibria. Flexibility of behavior at the individual level and self-organized feedback mechanisms at the system level are the key for both for this resilience and the large-scale internal development that colonies often undergo. Using meta-analyses, we also showed how point attractors are replaced with oscillations in these systems, where flexibility at the individual level has a cost. The emergence of specialists is not a prerequisite, but rather a consequence in these systems. In short, specialists emerge because larger systems have a relatively smaller variation, hence a smoother functioning. These systems are also not scaling linearly, for example, the number of foragers is kept very low even in large colonies, which is a mechanism that has probably evolved against predators.