DiEb
Posts: 312
Joined: May 2008
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It’s Amazing What Evolution Can Do!
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The usual pattern, again...
1. A puffed-up press-release for an upcoming article in a scientific magazine is found. The journalist's hyperbole is even inflated:
| Quote | | This article here recounts the now documented ability of bees to solve the “traveling salesman problem” faster than computers. |
2. Other editors advice for a more careful approach to the article, not the usual it is so complicated, ergo God did it.
3. Of course, these editors are ridiculed :
| Quote | | If the problem was so simple, then why do the scientists say that it would take a computer days to figure out the right optimization? |
4. ba77 spouts nonsense.
5. And - of course - the critical editors were right:
| Quote |
DiEb
10/27/2010
8:02 am
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
I can’t read the article, but here is the abstract:
| Quote | | [...] We analyzed bee flight movements in an array of four artificial flowers maximizing interfloral distances. Starting from a single patch, we sequentially added three new patches so that if bees visited them in the order in which they originally encountered flowers, they would follow a long (suboptimal) route. Bees’ tendency to visit patches in their discovery order decreased with experience. Instead, they optimized their flight distances by rearranging flower visitation sequences. This resulted in the development of a primary route (trapline) and two or three less frequently used secondary routes. Bees consistently used these routes after overnight breaks while occasionally exploring novel possibilities[...] |
So, they are solving the TSP for four nodes: there are six possible ways to visit the nodes, three when you neglect the orientation. What the text is saying is that the bees have an brutal force approach to the problem (This resulted in the development of a primary route (trapline) and two or three less frequently used secondary routes.), but are generally able to memorize they shortest way found.
BTW, in their paper Trapline foraging by bumble bees: IV. Optimization of route geometry in the absence of competition (Behavioral Ecology, September 29, 2006) the authors Kazuharu Ohashi, James D. Thomson, and Daniel D’Souza used 10 artificial flowers and showed that bees generally don’t follow the optimal path, but seem to be able to memorize earlier traplines. |
5. And as this editor was right, it will take ages for his comment to appear (one day and counting...)
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