Eur. Phys. J. B 42, 123-129 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2004-00364-9

Efficiency and robustness in ant networks of galleries

¹ Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
² ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Dr Aiguader 80, 08003 Barcelona, Spain
³ École Polytechnique de l'Université de Nantes, 2 rue de la Houssinière, BP 92208, 44322 Nantes Cedex 03, France
⁴ CENOLI, CP 231, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Boulevard du Triomphe, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

^a buhl@cict.fr

Received: 16 July 2004
Published online: 26 November 2004

Abstract

Recent theoretical and empirical studies have focused on the topology of large networks of communication/interactions in biological, social and technological systems. Most of them have been studied in the scope of the small-world and scale-free networks' theory. Here we analyze the characteristics of ant networks of galleries produced in a 2-D experimental setup. These networks are neither small-worlds nor scale-free networks and belong to a particular class of network, i.e. embedded planar graphs emerging from a distributed growth mechanism. We compare the networks of galleries with both minimal spanning trees and greedy triangulations. We show that the networks of galleries have a path system efficiency and robustness to disconnections closer to the one observed in triangulated networks though their cost is closer to the one of a tree. These networks may have been prevented to evolve toward the classes of small-world and scale-free networks because of the strong spatial constraints under which they grow, but they may share with many real networks a similar trend to result from a balance of constraints leading them to achieve both path system efficiency and robustness at low cost.