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PRECISE REGULATION. “In an undisturbed colony with a properly functioning mound, the nest atmosphere is different from the atmosphere outside. The collective metabolism of the colony, for example, depresses nest oxygen concentration by about 2 kilopascals partial pressure below atmospheric, and elevates nest carbon dioxide concentration by a similar amount.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

ALIGNMENT WITH THE WIND. “The swarm’s cognitive awareness of mound structure relies upon how the mound translates its interaction with environmental wind into a form this fluid network can interpret. This takes the form of a “map”, a field of wind-induced transient perturbation within the airways of the mound and nest.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

THE MENTAL MAP. “Mounds and termite colonies at first seem to be an unusual context for a cognitive system to operate. Nevertheless, they arguably meet the requirement. Cognitive systems are fundamentally representation systems: they map an environment onto some interpretable (mental) representation. In conventional cognitive systems, i.e. those that are housed in brains within discrete bodies, sensory transducers encode information about the environment, communications links convey the code to processors which interpret the code and converse with other processors to arrive at a coherent representational map.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

EXOSKELETON. “It is worth reiterating that the termites do not live in the mound, but in the subterranean nest. Thus, termite workers must somehow become aware of, and respond appropriately to, structural perturbations that may be situated as far as three meters from where they live. This betokens an impressive degree of what might be called “swarm cognition”.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

PLANT DIVINATION. "Future changes in resource availability are also predicted and acted upon. It has been known for some years that light reflected from green vegetation has an enhanced far red/red (FR/R) ratio and contains more blue light than normal sunshine. Many plants perceive these parts of the light spectrum and thus model the possibility of future, not current, shading from competitors and thus future reductions of available light energy." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-005-0014-9 View in LinkedIn

COMPETING GRADIENTS. “Mound repair, therefore, is a race between numerous initiation sites to be the one that transitions to self-sustaining σ-building first. In the damaged mound, this is usually assured by a small bias toward more intense τ-building near the site of damage. This produces a denser concentration of initiation sites there, making the progress to spongy build slightly faster there.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

STATISTICAL MOVEMENTS. “These initiation sites (“hypotheses”) are widespread throughout the damaged mound, and as repair progresses, these compete with one another for workers to “sustain” the hypothesis. In the end, the “winning” hypothesis will be the sites that can recruit enough workers to drive repair building most rapidly to the formation of a plug that blocks the passage. “Correctly” interpreting the distorted AC perturbation field in the damaged mound turns, therefore, on ensuring that plug formation takes place at the focal point of the distorted AC perturbation field.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn