How a Model Based on P-temporal Petri Nets Can Be Used to Study Aggregation Behavior

In animal societies, many observed collective behaviours result from self-organized processes based on local interactions among individuals. Aggregation is widespread in insect societies and can appear in response to environmental heterogeneities or by attraction between individuals. Understanding this process requires linking individual behavioural rules of insects to a choice dynamics at the colony level. In this paper, we propose a model for the self-organized aggregation inspired by Jeason et al. aggregation behaviour model. Specifically, we use a probabilistic P-temporal Petri Nets model and analyse its performance using simulation. The results showed that this aggregation process, based on a small set of simple behavioural rules and interaction among individuals, can be used by the group of agent to select collectively an aggregation site among two identical or different shelters by estimating the size of each shelter during the collective decision-making process.