full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Deborah Gordon: The emergent genius of ant colonies

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So I want now to show you a bit of film — and this will start out, first of all, showing you the nest enrncate. So the idea is that ants are coming in and out of the nest entrance. They've gone out to do different tasks, and the rate at which they meet as they come in and out of the nest entrance dteeirmnes, or influences, each ant's descioin about whether to go out, and which task to perform. This is taken through a fiber optcis microscope. It's down inside the nest. In the beginning you see the ants just kind of engaging with the fiber optics mposciocre. But the idea is that the ants are in there, and each ant is eenpirenxicg a certain flow of ants past it — a stream of contacts with other ants. And the pattern of these itocnaentris determines whether the ant comes back out, and what it does when it comes back out. You can also see this in the ants just outside the nest entrance like these. Each ant, then, as it comes back in, is contacting other ants. And the ants that are waiting just inside the nest entrance to decide whether to go out on their next trip, are cocinanttg the ants coming in.

Open Cloze

So I want now to show you a bit of film — and this will start out, first of all, showing you the nest ________. So the idea is that ants are coming in and out of the nest entrance. They've gone out to do different tasks, and the rate at which they meet as they come in and out of the nest entrance __________, or influences, each ant's ________ about whether to go out, and which task to perform. This is taken through a fiber ______ microscope. It's down inside the nest. In the beginning you see the ants just kind of engaging with the fiber optics __________. But the idea is that the ants are in there, and each ant is ____________ a certain flow of ants past it — a stream of contacts with other ants. And the pattern of these ____________ determines whether the ant comes back out, and what it does when it comes back out. You can also see this in the ants just outside the nest entrance like these. Each ant, then, as it comes back in, is contacting other ants. And the ants that are waiting just inside the nest entrance to decide whether to go out on their next trip, are __________ the ants coming in.

Solution

  1. optics
  2. experiencing
  3. decision
  4. contacting
  5. entrance
  6. microscope
  7. determines
  8. interactions

Original Text

So I want now to show you a bit of film — and this will start out, first of all, showing you the nest entrance. So the idea is that ants are coming in and out of the nest entrance. They've gone out to do different tasks, and the rate at which they meet as they come in and out of the nest entrance determines, or influences, each ant's decision about whether to go out, and which task to perform. This is taken through a fiber optics microscope. It's down inside the nest. In the beginning you see the ants just kind of engaging with the fiber optics microscope. But the idea is that the ants are in there, and each ant is experiencing a certain flow of ants past it — a stream of contacts with other ants. And the pattern of these interactions determines whether the ant comes back out, and what it does when it comes back out. You can also see this in the ants just outside the nest entrance like these. Each ant, then, as it comes back in, is contacting other ants. And the ants that are waiting just inside the nest entrance to decide whether to go out on their next trip, are contacting the ants coming in.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
nest maintenance 19
maintenance workers 15
nest entrance 7
ant colonies 5
midden workers 5
colony size 3
task allocation 3
workers performing 3
study site 2
mating flight 2
ant starts 2
worker ants 2
call task 2
colony manages 2
extra ants 2
ants working 2
extra nest 2
numbers performing 2
maintenance work 2
fiber optics 2
optics microscope 2
interaction patterns 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
nest maintenance workers 15
call task allocation 2
extra nest maintenance 2
nest maintenance work 2
fiber optics microscope 2

Important Words

  1. ant
  2. ants
  3. beginning
  4. bit
  5. coming
  6. contacting
  7. contacts
  8. decide
  9. decision
  10. determines
  11. engaging
  12. entrance
  13. experiencing
  14. fiber
  15. film
  16. flow
  17. idea
  18. influences
  19. interactions
  20. kind
  21. meet
  22. microscope
  23. nest
  24. optics
  25. pattern
  26. perform
  27. rate
  28. show
  29. showing
  30. start
  31. stream
  32. task
  33. tasks
  34. trip
  35. waiting