The organization of construction in ants, such as in the building of an ant colony, doesn't depend on centralized control or a blueprint. Instead, it's an emergent property of local interactions among ants.
Here's a simplified description of how ants do it:
Division of labor: Ant colonies have a division of labor. Worker ants are responsible for construction tasks, among other things.
Chemical communication: Ants use pheromones, which are chemical signals, to communicate with each other. They can leave pheromone trails to guide other ants towards food sources, potential nest sites, or areas that require construction or repair. Different pheromones or mixtures of pheromones can have different meanings.
Stigmergy: This is a mechanism of indirect coordination, where the actions of an ant change the environment, and these changes stimulate the next actions by the same or other ants. For example, an ant might start to pile up dirt, and other ants, sensing this change, might be stimulated to add more dirt to the pile. Over time, this can result in a large structure.
Response thresholds and positive feedback: Each ant has a "threshold" for responding to stimuli, and these thresholds can vary between ants. Some ants might start to dig or carry dirt if they detect a very faint pheromone trail, while others might require a stronger trail. This leads to positive feedback, where ants that have started a task can attract more ants to the task, amplifying their efforts.
Balancing via negative feedback: There's also negative feedback, which balances the construction activity. If too many ants are working on a task, the pheromone trail or other stimulus can get "diluted," reducing the number of ants attracted to the task.
The exact details of how ants organize their construction can depend on the species and the specific circumstances.
Ants are extremely successful — by some estimates, the total weight of all the ants on Earth is roughly equivalent to the total weight of all humans! Scientists have estimated that there are approximately 1 million ants for every human on Earth.
