Collective Motion and Decision-Making in Animal Groups
Collective organization is everywhere, both around us and within us. Our brains
are composed of billions of interconnected cells communicating with chemical and
electrical signals. Our bodies are formed from clustering, communicating cells,
and we ourselves are integrated in our own collective human society. Elsewhere
in the natural world hundreds of thousands of blind army ants coordinate a
massive raid across the rainforest floor, a flock of birds arcs and ripples
while descending to roost and a fish school convulses, as if one entity, when
attacked by a predator. How and why do animal groups move in unison? How does
individual behaviour produce group dynamics? How do animal societies make
informed unanimous decisions? Using an integrated computational and experimental
approach involving a range of organisms from insect swarms to human crowds I
will discuss how, and why, coordinated collective patterns are generated in
biological systems.