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Understanding the complex dynamics of communities of software developers requires a view of such organizations as a network of interacting agents involving both goals and constraints. Beyond their special features, these systems display…

Rodents serve as an important model for examining both individual and collective behavior. Dominance within rodent social structures can determine access to critical resources, such as food and mating opportunities. Yet, many aspects of the…

A classic measure of ecological stability describes the tendency of a community to return to equilibrium after small perturbation. While many advances show how the network structure of these communities severely constrains such tendencies,…

Dispersal networks critically shape the fate of ecological communities, yet the mechanisms linking connectivity and persistence remain poorly understood. We show that an interplay between asymmetric dispersal and asynchronous dynamics…

We propose a simple model for genetic adaptation to a changing environment, describing a fitness landscape characterized by two maxima. One is associated with "specialist" individuals that are adapted to the environment; this maximum moves…

Cultural learning is a unique human capacity essential for a wide range of adaptations. Researchers have argued that folktales have the pedagogical function of transmitting the essential information for the environment. The most important…

The population dynamics of predator-prey systems in the presence of patch-specific predators are explored in a setting where the prey population has access to both habitats. The emphasis is in situations where patch-prey abundance drives…

Collective vigilance describes how animals in groups benefit from the predator detection efforts of others. Empirical observations typically find either a many-eyes strategy with all (or many) group members maintaining a low level of…

Assembling optimal microbial communities is key for various applications in biofuel production, agriculture, and human health. Finding the optimal community is challenging because the number of possible communities grows exponentially with…

Biological and cultural inspired optimization algorithms are nowadays part of the basic toolkit of a great many research domains. By mimicking processes in nature and animal societies, these general-purpose search algorithms promise to…

Animal behavior serves as a reliable indicator of the adaptation of organisms to their environment and their overall well-being. Through rigorous observation of animal actions and interactions, researchers and observers can glean valuable…

We develop a mathematical model of extinction and coexistence in a generic predator-prey ecosystem composed of two herbivores in asymmetrical competition and a hunter exerting a predatory pressure on both species. With the aim of…

Large image collections generated from camera traps offer valuable insights into species richness, occupancy, and activity patterns, significantly aiding biodiversity monitoring. However, the manual processing of these datasets is…

A substantial share of the Earth's land surface is managed by humans, with cities representing the most extreme form of anthropogenic land use. There are zillion ways in which settlements can be arranged across a given area, and their…

Understanding the origins of volunteerism and free-riding is crucial in collective action situations where a sufficient number of cooperators is necessary to achieve shared benefits, such as in vaccination campaigns and social change…

Interactions among individuals from the same-species of wild animals are an important component of population dynamics. An interaction can be either static (based on overlap of space use) or dynamic (based on movement). The goal of this…

We apply genetic programming techniques to the `shepherding' problem, in which a group of one type of animal (sheep dogs) attempts to control the movements of a second group of animals (sheep) obeying flocking behavior. Our genetic…

For past several decades, research efforts in population modelling has proven its efficacy in understanding the basic information about residential and commercial areas, as well as for the purposes of planning, development and improvement…

Recent developments of eco-evolutionary models have shown that evolving feedbacks between behavioral strategies and the environment of game interactions, leading to changes in the underlying payoff matrix, can impact the underlying…

In animal societies as well as in human crowds, many observed collective behaviours result from self-organized processes based on local interactions among individuals. However, models of crowd dynamics are still lacking a systematic…