Influence of experimental platform edge and aggregation degree of ants

Aggregation is one of the most common and important phenomena in natural world. Studying animal aggregation has been a challenging and has task attracted a wide range of scientists. In order to further study the regulation of the self-organization of an ant group, we observe the behaviour of Cam ponotus
jam ponicus on a square area and a circular area. High-speed camera was used to track ant positions, quantitative statistics was then conducted. It was found that the experimental platform edge had particular “attraction” for the ants. Attraction of platform edge tended to decrease with increasing group size.The study
of velocity showed that ants tended to stop or move slowly near the wall and tended to move slowly far from the wall. Hierarchical social entropy was used to measure aggregation degree. The social entropy was found to increase initially then decrease with gradual increase in group size, indicating that increase in group size resulted in ant aggregation degree to first decrease and then increase.