![]() ![]() ![]() "These ants don't form obvious foraging trails like many ants we are familiar with," Popp said. This is because the ants can explore a large area in less time, as they cross their own paths less frequently. The study finds that the ants' meandering, or zigzag, walking pattern may make their search more efficient than a purely random search. These slow-moving critters are only about half the length of a medium grain of rice. ![]() In Arizona, these ants can be found nesting between or under rocks in areas above elevations of 7000 feet. "We found that rock ants show a striking, regular meandering pattern when exploring the area around their nests." ![]() "Previously, researchers in the field assumed that ants move in a pure random walk when searching for targets of which they don't know their location," said Stefan Popp, the first author of the paper and graduate student in UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The ants followed a systematic meandering pattern combined with some random movement-a method with the potential to optimize exploration in their natural environment. In a recent paper published in the journal iScience, UArizona researchers found that when a colony of rock ants is placed in an unfamiliar environment in the lab, the ants wander in a way that's not as random as previously thought. ![]()
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