Title: Building, Swimming, and Learning Together: Collective Behavior in Fire Ants
Speaker: Takao Sasaki
Date: Thursday, October 1, 2026
Time: 16:30-17:30
Place: ASBAM–UMRAM Seminar Room(SC-106)
Abstract: Collective behavior in social insects reveals how complex group-level functions can emerge from simple local interactions. In this talk, I will present three studies on the fire ant (Solenopsis invicta). First, workers self-assemble into floating pontoon bridges to cross water, forming stable structures through dynamic proto-bridges. Second, these ants form rafts and can swim together toward a visually conspicuous landmark, a behavior known as beacon aiming. We will discuss the benefits and costs of collective swimming and how rafts collectively determine their direction. Finally, using a task in which ants deposit particles to build paths across viscous substrates, we show that colonies produce increasingly straight and efficient routes over repeated trials, demonstrating collective learning. I will also discuss how these complex collective behaviors can emerge and improve through decentralized interactions.
Bio: Takao Sasaki is an Associate Professor in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. He obtained a Ph.D. in Biology from Arizona State University and remained at the same institute as a postdoctoral researcher for a year. He then became a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Prior to joining the University of Rochester, he was an Assistant Professor in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. His main research interest is to understand collective decision making—how a group of individuals processes information together and achieves higher cognitive performance than a lone individual.