The effect of environmental structure on the utility of communication in hive-based swarms

This paper is an examination of communication in hive-based swarms in the biological setting, focusing on the effect environmental factors have on the utility of communication. Our investigation utilizes a generational survival task to measure the benefit of communication in a biological setting. Swarm members forage for food, consuming energy in the process, and returning to a central "hive" to contribute any surplus. The resources of the hive determine when reproduction is possible, so it is in the best interest of the population to maximize the efficiency of foraging. The measure of performance is the size of the swarm surviving at the end of a simulation run. Each simulation begins with a swarm of fixed size (5 agents), making contributions to the hive (and subsequent procreation) necessary for good performance.