The Nonlinear Dynamics of Survival and Social Facilitation in Termites

This paper describes a study on termites, investigating the relationship between increasing group size and individual worker longevity under resource-deprived conditions. It was found that survival was significantly lower for isolated individuals and higher for individuals in bigger group sizes, suggesting that social interactions play an important role in the mechanisms leading to longer survival. A computer model, incorporating individual interactions among mobile cellular automata is presented along with experiments.