This page contains results from a simulation of the nest construction process employed by termites.
The above series of images shows the construction of a queen chamber. The red cubes are the ground, the greed cubes are the queen and the yellow cubes are the deposited building material. The first image shows the formation of "pillar-like" structures. These pillar like structures are seen when real termites construct queen chambers and so are an important result for this simulation. The second image shows the construction of walls between the pillars. The third image shows the finished dome.
This simulation uses a similar setup to the previous simulation with the addition of wind blowing from the bottom right corner of the image to the top left. The effect of the wind can be seen in the lengthening of the dome formed.
This series of images shows the formation of covered walkways. Termites are released from the left hand side of the world every timestep and move to the right, depositing trail pheromone at every step (shown in blue in these images). A second group of termites place building material when they encounter a particular concentration of trail pheromone. This results in a covered walkway being formed.
This is a view inside the same tunnel, it show that the termites build a tunnel without internal obstructions.
In the earlier examples the building termites enter the world from the same location as the trail termites. In this series of images the building termites are allowed to enter the world from any location. This results in a much less regular path being formed due to the formation of side paths as shown in the second image.
Two tunnels are now crossed with and without the previously mentioned constraints on entering the world. In both cases a dome is formed where the tunnels cross.
The four images above show a new explanation for the formation of entrances in queen chambers based on principles of self-organisation. Nursing termites are added to the simulation. These termites travel to and from the queen, representing those termites which feed the queen and collect the young. The nursing termites emit and are attracted to a trail pheromone which inhibits building. The first image shows that the nursing termites initially self-organise and form several paths. Over time due to positive feedback from the trail pheromone (stronger pheromone levels are more attractive than weak pheromone levels) many of the paths collapse and the termites that use them join stronger paths (Image 2). The entrance to the dome through which the collapsed path passed is then filled by the builders (Image 3). This process continues until eventually only one path remains which all the termites use (Image 4). (The second and third images are at the same time point, but from different viewpoints).
Bonabeau, E., Theraulaz, G., Deneubourg, J.-L., Franks, N., Rafelsberger, O., Joly, J.-L., Blanco, S. (1998), A model for the emergence of pillars, walls and royal chambers in termite nests, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 353, p.1561-1576.
