To examine the impact of individual variations in foraging behaviors, we developed a spatially-explicit Agent-Based Model. ABBAS (Animal Behavior Based on Agents Simulations) is a free software that simulates honey bees foraging in a bidimensional space using Python's standard numerical libraries. It implements a detailed flight dynamics based on stochastic diffusion processes, parametrized following a wide range of experiments (see below for more details), and a recruitment mechanism that mimics the waggle dance in honey bees. Foragers were divided into two groups, scouts and recruits, with each group having their own properties. ABBAS provides an API to control the properties of each group easily and schedule batches of simulations.
The current version of this software (v1.0) was used in a recent paper was used to study the joint impact of task allocation and behavioral persistence on collective behavior.
We also provide here a description of our model using the Overview, Design concepts, and Details (ODD) protocol.
If you find this useful, please star this repository and/or cite our paper:
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Mosqueiro, Cook, Huerta, Gadau, Smith, Pinter-Wollman Task allocation and site fidelity jointly influence foraging regulation in honeybee colonies. Royal Society Open Science 4:170344 (2017). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.170344 (there was a preprint available too).
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Dataset: Cook, Mosqueiro, Huerta, Gadau, Smith, Pinter-Wollman Task allocation and site fidelity jointly influence foraging regulation in honeybee colonies. Available on FigSahre. DOI: m9.figshare.3619779.v1.
As an example of how to use ABBAS, we provide a sample code that reproduces Figure 3a from our paper. In this example,
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we set up an environmentwith an initial amount of resources,
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set up the hive (number of foragers, number of scouts, how persistent they are, etc),
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and simulate in parallel instances of the same scenario to estimate how much
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food the bees collected (collective outcome).
We then compile all of these results, estimating the average and standard deviation of the collected food as a function of time. We finish with a fuzzy plot of the average amount of resource collected and 1.5 standard deviations as a function of time.
This software uses Python 2.7*. We list below the required Python libraries that are non-standard:
- numpy 11.*+
- multiprocessing
- subprocess
- pickle
To create the videos:
- matplotlib 1.10+
- ffmpeg 3.0.*
This software is distributed under the GPL-3 license. Read the full terms are provided in the LICENSE file.
tl;dr version: You can run, distribute, study, copy and improve as long as you keep the original license. If you modify it, you must share your improvements under GPL-3. Just remember not to sue us if anything goes wrong with the code. We would, of course, appreciate if you leave a star in our original repository to show your support.
For a summary (boilerplate):
ABBAS (Animal Behavior Based on Agents Simulations) simulates honey bees
foraging as agents in a two-dimensional space.
Copyright (C) 2016 Thiago Mosqueiro, Noa Pinter-Wollman, Ramon Huerta,
Chelsea Cook, Jürgen Gadau, Brian Smith
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.