Insect decision - making

It has long been held that decision made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals. The idea goes back to the 'jury theorem' of Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th-century French philosopher who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the social sciences. Condorcet's theory describes collective decisions , outlining how democratic decisions tend to outperform dictatorial ones. If, for example , each member of a jury has only partial information ,the majority decision is more likely to be correct than a decision arrived at by a single juror. Moreover, the probability of a correct decision increases with the size of the jury. Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants ,bees ,birds and dolphins .Bees make collective decisions ,and they do it rather well, according to Christian List of the London School of Economics ,who has studied group decision-making in humans and animals. Researchers led by Dr List looked at colonies once the original colony reaches a certain size. The queen goes off with about two-thirds of the worker bees to live in a new home or nest , leaving a daughter queen in the old nest with the remaining workers. Among the bees that depart are some that have searched for and found some new nest sites , and reported back using a characteristic body movement known as a 'waggle dance' to indicate to the other bees the suitable places they have located. The longer the dance , the better the site. After a while ,…