Self-organized systems can evolve by small parameter shifts that produce large changes in outcome. Concepts from mathematical ecology show how the way swarming bees dance helps to achieve unanimous decisions. In work published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Mary Myerscough1 has taken a novel approach to the modelling of group decision-making by honeybee swarms when they are in search of a new home. Bees 'waggle dance' to communicate locations of food in foraging, and of potential nest sites when a colony moves during swarming. Myerscough treats the scout bees dancing for alternative sites as populations, and models their growth and extinction with the tools of mathematical ecology. From this approach it is evident how a slight difference in the way the dance-language 'recruitment' of other bees is structured in foraging and house-hunting influences the outcome of each process.
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