Collective intelligence in the face of nutritional challenges in ants

An individual-based model demonstrates that these impressive feats of nutritional compensation emerge from simple individual decisions. These results show that, by adjusting their feeding behavior at the individual level, ants sustain homeostasis at the colony level.

In ants, food is brought back to the nest by only 10% of its members: the harvesters. The food is then regurgitated and shared among all the members of the colony. How do the harvesters deal with food imbalances in the colony?