  Many species of ants forage by building up two files: an outbound one moving
from the nest to the foraging area, and a nestbound one, returning from it to
the nest. Those files are eventually submitted to different threats. If the
danger is concentrated at one point of the file, one might expect that ants
returning to the nest will pass danger information to their nestmates moving in
the opposite direction towards the danger area. In this paper, we construct
simple cellular automata models for foraging ants submitted to localized
abduction, were danger information is transmitted using different protocols,
including the possibility of no transmission. The parameters we have used in
the simulations have been estimated from actual experiments under natural
conditions. So, it would be easy to test our information-transmission hypothese
in real experiments. Preliminary experimental results published elsewhere
suggest that the behavior of foraging ants of the species Atta insularis is
best described using the hypothesis of no transmission of danger information.
