Fig. 1
From: Modeling the movement of Oecophylla smaragdina on short-length scales in an unfamiliar environment
In the top left panel we show the trajectory of a single ant during a typical trial, with all points \({{\textbf { x}}}(t)=(x[t],y[t])\) measured during a trial of duration \(T=300\) s connected with the blue curve. The other panels display ‘heat’ maps of the normalized distribution over position n(x, y) and velocity \(P(v_x,v_y)\). The color scales indicate the value of n(x, y) in units of \(\textrm{cm}^{-2}\) and \(P(v_x,v_y)\) in units \((\mathrm {cm/s})^{-2}\). Upper right: n(x, y) is largest near boundaries, decreases rapidly and then remains constant in the interior. Lower left: \(P(v_x,v_y)\) for ants in the arena interior (further than 3 cm from a boundary) is isotropic with a non-monotonic speed dependence. Lower right: \(P(v_x,v_y)\) for ants within 3 cm of the boundary looks like a ‘plus’ sign because ants move along arena edges