Telephone calls also follow routes with the highest scores, so they tend to follow the short, traffic-free routes created by the ants. Yet another species of ant has been designed by Marco Dorigo at the Free University of Brussels. His ants are designed to work on data networks and use a trail system similar to BT's and Schoonderwoerd's. Competition between American telecoms companies is fierce, and the edge that ants are likely to bring will be more keenly sought there, he says. MCI also wants to let the ants evolve.
All ants implement an algorithm for routing information.
But it is possible that the existing algorithms could be improved upon. In order to breed, the ants swap small segments of their programming code. Each ant will have a built-in method for judging how well it does its allotted task, using a measure known as a fitness function. But they are not to everyone's taste. Schoonderwoerd says that with his system there was no need for such methods because his ants are relatively simple.