Collective decision making in the social insects often proceeds via feedback cycles based on positive signaling. Negative signals have, however, been found in a few contexts in which costs exist for paying attention to no longer useful information. Here we incorporate new research on the specificity and context of the negative stop signal into an agent based model of honey bee foraging to explore the adaptive basis of negative signaling in the dance language. Our work suggests that the stop signal, by acting as a counterbalance to the waggle dance, allows colonies to rapidly shut down attacks on other colonies. This could be a key adaptation, as the costs of attacking a colony strong enough to defend itself are significant.

中文翻译：

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模拟负信号在蜜蜂种内竞争中的适应性作用

群居昆虫的集体决策通常通过基于积极信号的反馈循环进行。然而，在一些环境中发现了负面信号，在这些环境中，关注不再有用的信息会产生成本。在这里，我们将有关负面停止信号的特异性和上下文的新研究纳入基于代理的蜜蜂觅食模型，以探索舞蹈语言中负面信号的适应性基础。我们的工作表明，停止信号通过作为摇摆舞的平衡，允许殖民地迅速关闭对其他殖民地的攻击。这可能是一个关键的调整，因为攻击一个足够强大以自卫的殖民地的成本是巨大的。