Australian Scientists Use ‘Age of Empires’ To Simulate Ant Warfare

Slashdot reader TranquilVoid writes: To raised perceive the battles between native and invasive ants, scientists at Australia’s nationwide science company have turned to Microsoft’s traditional pc recreation to mannequin ant warfare.

Throughout Australia, 50 completely different species of invasive ants have established themselves, together with electrical ants, hearth ants and yellow loopy ants, with a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} spent trying to eradicate them.

“Ants are one of many few teams of animal species during which warfare resembles human warfare, when it comes to scale and mortality,” researcher Samuel Lymbery stated. The analysis discovered small armies of robust troopers did higher in advanced terrain-based battlefields and huge armies of weaker troopers fared higher in easy open battlefields. Within the ant world, a easy battlefield could be a footpath or park whereas a fancy battlefield could be bushland with undergrowth and woody particles.

Dr Lymbery stated his work might assist develop new approaches to habitat administration, like including undergrowth or extra environmental complexity again into urbanised environments, to tip the aggressive stability again in favour of native ants.