Analysis of ant colonies could improve network algorithms

An analysis of ant colony behavior could yield better algorithms for network communication, say investigators. Biologists have long suspected that ants base their population-density estimates on the frequency with which they — literally — bump into other ants while randomly exploring their environments. That theory gets new support from a theoretical paper. The paper shows that observations from random exploration of the environment converge very quickly on an accurate estimate of population density. Indeed, they converge about as quickly as is theoretically possible.