**** Today Fri, December 8****
**** note time 1:00p ****
For those that couldn't make Iain's SFI talk yesterday, he has agreed to give us
an encore at our office. I *highly* recommend attending.
Iain D. Couzin
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK & Department of Ecology
and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
Collective Motion and Decision-Making in Animal Groups
LOCATION: 624 Agua Fria Conference Room
TIME: Fri Dec 8, 1:00p ***
Lunch will NOT be available for this talk
ABSTRACT: Animal groups such as bird flocks, insect swarms and fish schools are
spectacular, ecologically important and sometimes devastating features of the
biology of various species. Outbreaks of the desert locust, for example, can
invade approximately one fifth of the Earth's land surface and are estimated to
affect the livelihood of one in ten people on the planet.
Using a combined theoretical and experimental approach involving insect and
vertebrate groups I will address how, and why, individuals move in unison and
investigate the principals of information transfer in these groups, particularly
focusing on leadership and collective consensus decision-making.
For very large animal groups, despite huge differences in the size and cognitive
abilities of group members, recent models from theoretical physics
('self-propelled particle', SPP, models) have suggested that general principles
underlie collective motion. Such models demonstrate that some group-level
properties may be largely independent of the types of animals involved. I shall
present recent experimental work on locusts that validates some of the
predictions of simple mechanistic models including a density-dependent "phase
transition" from disordered to ordered motion.
Details of the mechanism by which individuals interact, however, also provide
important biological insights into swarm behaviour. Using laboratory studies
involving nerve manipulation and field experiments we demonstrate that some
swarming insects are in effect on a "forced march" driven by cannibalism.
These results will be discussed in the context of the evolution of functional
complexity and pattern formation in biological systems.
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