Title: Search movement strategies in ants
Abstract: Mobile animals spend much of their life searching for resources, be it for food, water, mates, shelter, or group members. Typically, they need to stay in a particular area (habitat), and often even stay close to a ‘central place’, like a nest, to return quickly to it. If resources are unpredictably distributed, the animal must adopt a search strategy to maximize encounters with such resources. We know relatively little about how animals perform search for unknown targets, compared to search for known locations and theoretical work or how agents should move. We know even less about it in collective systems like social insect colonies, where the individuals are expected to coordinate to maximize group success. Here, we investigate several aspects of the search behavior of Temnothorax rugatulus ants in a large arena in the lab. Specifically, we investigate 1) a meandering pattern, 2) how exploration changes with experience of the surroundings, and 3) how chemical footprints influence the movement behavior