Fig. 2
From: Uncovering the social interaction network in swarm intelligence algorithms
Three dimensions of information processing define the self-organized mechanism in a swarm system: how information flows, how information is used, and the definition of information. The diffusion flow occurs when individuals passively receive information that other individuals spread in the environment whereas serendipitous flow occurs when individuals need to actively search for information left in the environment by other individuals. When using information in a trigger-based system, individuals act in the environment by performing specific, mostly one-off, actions, while in a follow-through, they are guided by what they find, and the action can be more long-lasting. The marker-based information is explicitly defined for interaction purposes (e.g., pheromone), while individuals implicitly share sematectonic information as the current state of the population (figure adapted from (Mamei et al. 2006))