What are the research results comparing the war between ants with the battle simulation in the masterpiece RTS 'Age of Empire II'?
Ants that prosper as a community by sharing roles among queen ants, worker ants, and male ants are called
Complex battlefields favor strong soldiers over large armies in social animal warfare | PNAS
https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2217973120
Ant wars: How native species can win the battle over invasive pests
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-ant-wars-native-species-invasive.html
``Social insects like ants are one of the few species that wage war on a scale similar to humans,'' said Rafael Didham, professor of animal biology at the University of Western Australia. 's future is being invested in for the greater good of the ant population.'
The research team first used 'Age of Empires II: Age of Kings' to conduct a battle simulation with Elite Teutonic Knights, the infantry unit with the highest individual combat power, and Heavy Sword Swordsmen, the infantry unit with the lowest individual combat power. I was.
After 10 battles between 1 units, Elite Teutonic Knights won every battle. However, when I increased the number of Heavy Swordsmen to 5-10, the elite Teutonic Knights began to lose all their battles.
Furthermore, if you increase the number of heavy sword swordsmen from 20 to 90 against the 9 Elite Teutonic Knights, the Elite Teutonic Knight's winning rate will decrease. Additionally, elite Teutonic Knights were more likely to die in simpler arenas than in more complex terrain.
Next, we observed a battle between the Australian meat ant (Iridomyrmex purpureus), a native Australian species, and the exotic Argentinean ant (Linepithema humile), known as a pest. Australian meat ants are large, abundant in Australian scrubland forests, and build gravel nests. Argentine ants, on the other hand, are smaller but aggressive and are known to form large, cooperative colonies.
According to the research team, when Australian meat ants and Argentine ants fight each other, Australian meat ants almost always win due to the difference in physique. However, when it comes to fighting between groups, Argentine ants have larger armies than Australian meat ants.
by patrickkkavanagh
When we actually let groups fight each other, we found that the mortality rate of Australian meat ants that confronted the army of Argentine ants was low in complex terrain and high in simple terrain. Australian meat ants with high individual combat power but small group size are elite Teutonic Knights, and Argentine ants with low individual combat power but large group size are overlapped with heavy sword swordsmen, mathematics based on combat in the game. The research team claims that there are commonalities between the model and the fight between the ants.
``Like humans and computer games, wars between ants depend on the nature of the battlefield,'' Professor Didam argued.
Bruce Weber, principal investigator at CISCO, argues that research into ant-ant warfare could be applied to the management of invasive ants. ``Like the Argentine ants, nonnative ants are smaller but more numerous than native species, and are often dominant in deforested areas,'' Weber said. Debris is removed, so it often becomes an open and simple battlefield,” he said, adding that adding things like fallen trees and stones to areas where native and invasive species coexist gives native species an advantage. I think it's possible to adjust the balance like this.
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