{"id":4786,"date":"2019-05-01T11:42:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T15:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/?p=4786"},"modified":"2019-05-01T12:03:51","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T16:03:51","slug":"collective-sensing-and-decision-making-in-animal-groups-from-fish-schools-to-primate-societies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/?p=4786","title":{"rendered":"Collective Sensing and Decision-Making in Animal Groups: From Fish Schools to Primate Societies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Abstract:<\/strong> Understanding how social influence\u00a0shapes biological processes is a central challenge in contemporary science,\u00a0essential for achieving progress in\u00a0a variety of fields ranging from the\u00a0organization and evolution of coordinated collective action among cells, or\u00a0animals, to the dynamics of\u00a0information exchange in human societies. Using an\u00a0integrated experimental and theoretical approach I will address how, and why,\u00a0animals exhibit\u00a0highly-coordinated collective behavior. I will demonstrate\u00a0imaging and virtual reality technology that allows us to reconstruct\u00a0(automatically) the\u00a0dynamic, time-varying networks that correspond to the\u00a0visual cues employed by organisms when making movement decisions. Sensory\u00a0networks are shown to provide a much more accurate representation of how social\u00a0influence propagates in groups, and their analysis allows us to\u00a0identify, for\u00a0any instant in time, the most socially-influential individuals within groups,\u00a0and to predict the magnitude of complex behavioral cascades\u00a0before they\u00a0actually occur. I will also investigate the coupling between spatial and\u00a0information dynamics in groups and reveal that emergent\u00a0problem solving is the\u00a0predominant mechanism by which mobile groups sense, and respond to complex\u00a0environmental gradients. Evolutionary\u00a0modeling demonstrates such \u2018physical\u00a0computation\u2019 readily evolves within populations of selfish organisms, allowing\u00a0individuals to compute\u00a0collectively the spatial distribution of resources. Finally,\u00a0I will reveal the critical role uninformed, or unbiased, individuals play in\u00a0effecting fast and\u00a0democratic consensus decision-making in collectives,\u00a0and will test these predictions with experiments involving schooling fish and groups\u00a0of wild storks and baboons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biography:<\/strong> Iain Couzin is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Department of Collective Behaviour and the DFG Excellence Cluster \u2018Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour\u2019, and Chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Previously he was an Assistant- and then Full-Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, and prior to that a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow in the Sciences at Balliol College, Oxford. His work aims to reveal the fundamental principles that underlie evolved collective behavior, and consequently his research includes the study of a wide range of biological systems, from insect swarms to fish schools and primate groups. In recognition of his research he has been recipient of the Searle Scholar Award in 2008, top 5 most cited papers of the decade in animal behavior research 1999-2010, the Mohammed Dahleh Award in 2009, Popular Science\u2019s “Brilliant 10\u201d Award in 2010, National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award in 2012, the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2013 and Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thompson Reuters) Global Highly Cited Researcher in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abstract: Understanding how social influence\u00a0shapes biological processes is a central challenge in contemporary science,\u00a0essential for achieving progress in\u00a0a variety of fields ranging from the\u00a0organization and evolution of coordinated collective action among cells, or\u00a0animals, to the dynamics of\u00a0information exchange in human societies. Using an\u00a0integrated experimental and theoretical approach I will address how, and why,\u00a0animals exhibit\u00a0highly-coordinated collective […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[178,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2019","category-seminars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4786"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4789,"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions\/4789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mseas.mit.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}