Cooperative Ant Colonies for Optimizing Resource Allocation in Transportation

Abstract Domatia are hollow structures in plants occupied by ant colonies, in turn ants provide protection against herbivores. In plants, competition for resources has driven sex-related changes in the patterns of resource allocation to life-history traits and defence traits. The resource-competition hypothesis (RCH) proposes that female plants due to their higher investment in reproduction will allocate fewer resources to defence production, showing greater herbivore damage than other sexual forms. We hypothesise the existence of sex-related differences in defensive traits of domatia-bearing plants, being female plants less defended due to differences in domatia traits, such as size, number of domatia and their position, exhibiting more herbivore damage than hermaphrodite plants of Myriocarpa longipes, a facultative neotropical myrmecophyte. We found eight species of ants inhabiting domatia; some species co-inhabited the same plant, even the same branch. Our results are consistent with the predictions of RCH, as female plants had ant-inhabited domatia restricted to the middle position of their branches and exhibited greater herbivore damage in leaves than hermaphrodites. However, we did not find differences in domatia size and leaf area between sexual forms. Our study provides evidence for intersexual differences in domatia position and herbivory in a facultative ant–plant mutualism in M. longipes. We highlight the importance of considering the plant sex in ant–plant interactions. Differences in resource allocation related to sexual reproduction could influence the outcome of ant–plant interactions.

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Folk-economic beliefs as moral intuitions

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18000456 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Author(s):

Neil Malhotra

Keyword(s):

Resource Allocation ◽

Moral Intuitions ◽

Economic Beliefs ◽

Evolutionary Explanations

AbstractAlthough Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) cataloguing of and evolutionary explanations for folk-economic beliefs is important and valuable, the authors fail to connect their theories to existing explanations for why people do not think like economists. For instance, people often have moral intuitions akin to principles of fairness and justice that conflict with utilitarian approaches to resource allocation.

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Mother or Wife?

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000124 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 232-242 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Phia S. Salter ◽

Glenn Adams

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Resource Allocation ◽

Cultural Psychology ◽

The United States ◽

Personal Relationship ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Church Membership ◽

Cultural Dynamics ◽

Psychology Perspective ◽

Cultural Ecological

Inspired by “Mother or Wife” African dilemma tales, the present research utilizes a cultural psychology perspective to explore the dynamic, mutual constitution of personal relationship tendencies and cultural-ecological affordances for neoliberal subjectivity and abstracted independence. We administered a resource allocation task in Ghana and the United States to assess the prioritization of conjugal/nuclear relationships over consanguine/kin relationships along three dimensions of sociocultural variation: nation (American and Ghanaian), residence (urban and rural), and church membership (Pentecostal Charismatic and Traditional Western Mission). Results show that tendencies to prioritize nuclear over kin relationships – especially spouses over parents – were greater among participants in the first compared to the second of each pair. Discussion considers issues for a cultural psychology of cultural dynamics.

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Application of Information Introduced to Dynamic Message Processing and Enjoyment

Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications ◽

10.1027/1864-1105/a000195 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 196-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Byungho Park ◽

Rachel L. Bailey

Keyword(s):

Resource Allocation ◽

Recognition Memory ◽

Emotional Processing ◽

Orienting Response ◽

Structural Features ◽

Cognitive Resources ◽

Coding System ◽

Message Complexity ◽

Cognitive Resource ◽

Cognitive Overload

Abstract. In an effort to quantify message complexity in such a way that predictions regarding the moment-to-moment cognitive and emotional processing of viewers would be made, Lang and her colleagues devised the coding system information introduced (or ii). This coding system quantifies the number of structural features that are known to consume cognitive resources and considers it in combination with the number of camera changes (cc) in the video, which supply additional cognitive resources owing to their elicitation of an orienting response. This study further validates ii using psychophysiological responses that index cognitive resource allocation and recognition memory. We also pose two novel hypotheses regarding the confluence of controlled and automatic processing and the effect of cognitive overload on enjoyment of messages. Thirty television advertisements were selected from a pool of 172 (all 20 s in length) based on their ii/cc ratio and ratings for their arousing content. Heart rate change over time showed significant deceleration (indicative of increased cognitive resource allocation) for messages with greater ii/cc ratios. Further, recognition memory worsened as ii/cc increased. It was also found that message complexity increases both automatic and controlled allocations to processing, and that the most complex messages may have created a state of cognitive overload, which was received as enjoyable by the participants in this television context.

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