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SUMMARY:Do ants and PhD students even make good decisions ? A short answer
  from your local biology lab
DTSTART:20250605T120000Z
DTEND:20250605T140000Z
DTSTAMP:20260423T143000Z
UID:indico-event-14211@indico.math.cnrs.fr
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Louis Devers (IMT)\n\nIt is tempting to believe huma
 nity as a species prevailed because of its capacity to make good decisions
 . Being smarter intuitively sounds like a requisite to tame one's environm
 ent\, dangers\, fulfil collective nutritional needs and prosper. However o
 ne could ask how do we define a good decision or even intelligence ? And i
 s it really necessary to survive ? Taking an example : ants like humans ar
 e ubiquitous\, as they exhibit an impressive ecological success all over t
 he globe. Although\, we would not say that an ant\, with only 250\,000 neu
 rons against 86 billions for humans\, is particularly smart\, and yet\, th
 ey prosper. What would be the sufficient "intelligence" level to prevail t
 hen ? And how do they take "good decisions" with this few neurons ?\nA kno
 wn particularity of ants is that they transport relatively heavy things on
  a regular basis (e.g. food\, larvae\, soil). As transporting things usual
 ly costs a lot of energy\, ants success might highly depend on their capac
 ity to take good transportation decisions and not waste energy. In this pr
 esentation\, I will present my work on the optimality of transportation de
 cision in ants as a maths/physics person in a biology lab (the CBI). We wi
 ll see how\, using maths\, physics\, and a lot of manual work\, we can ask
  things nicely to ants\, measure their decisions\, test their fitness\, an
 d search for possible cognitive and metabolic explanations.\n\nhttps://ind
 ico.math.cnrs.fr/event/14211/
LOCATION:Johnson 1R3
URL:https://indico.math.cnrs.fr/event/14211/
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