Related papers: Uncovering complementary information sharing in sp…
Precisely how ecological factors influence animal social structure is far from clear. We explore this question using an agent-based model inspired by the fission-fusion society of Spider monkeys (Ateles spp). Our model introduces a…
Swarm dynamics is the study of collections of agents that interact with one another without central control. In natural systems, insects, birds, fish and other large mammals function in larger units to increase the overall fitness of the…
The propagation of information in social, biological and technological systems represents a crucial component in their dynamic behavior. When limited to pairwise interactions, a rather firm grip is available on the relevant parameters and…
The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group-living species to achieve collective…
Social foraging is a widespread form of animal foraging in which groups of individuals coordinate their decisions to exploit resources in the environment. Animals show a variety of social structures from egalitarian to hierarchical. In this…
Living in groups brings benefits to many animals, such as a protection against predators and an improved capacity for sensing and making decisions while searching for resources in uncertain environments. A body of studies has shown how…
Collective systems that self-organise to maximise the group's ability to collect and distribute information can be successful in environments with high spatial and temporal variation. Such organisations are abundant in nature, as sharing…
Eco-evolutionary frameworks can explain certain features of communities in which ecological and evolutionary processes occur over comparable timescales. Here, we investigate whether an evolutionary dynamics may interact with the spatial…
Foraging is a widespread behavior, and being part of a group may bring several benefits compared to solitary foraging, such as collective pooling of information and reducing environmental uncertainty. Often theoretical models of collective…
Animals typically forage in groups. Social foraging can help animals avoid predation and decrease their uncertainty about the richness of food resources. Despite this, theoretical mechanistic models of patch foraging have overwhelmingly…
How do social animals make effective decisions in the absence of a leader? While coordination can improve accuracy, it also introduces delays as information propagates through the group. In changing environments, these delays can outweigh…
Animals that travel together in groups display a variety of fascinating motion patterns thought to be the result of delicate local interactions among group members. Although the most informative way of investigating and interpreting…
We discuss various features of the trajectories of spider monkeys looking for food in a tropical forest, as observed recently in an extensive {\it in situ} study. Some of the features observed can be interpreted as the result of social…
Many animal groups are heterogeneous and may even consist of individuals of different species, called mixed-species flocks. Mathematical and computational models of collective animal movement behaviour, however, typically assume that groups…
Collective motion of bird flocks can be explained via the hypothesis of many wrongs, and/or, a structured leadership mechanism. In pigeons, previous studies have shown that there is a well-defined hierarchical structure and certain specific…
Recent studies have shown that novel collective behaviors emerge in complex systems due to the presence of higher-order interactions. However, how the collective behavior of a system is influenced by the microscopic organization of its…
Often exhibiting hierarchical and overlapping structures, communities or modular groups are fundamental and complex in network science. One of the most exploited tools to detect the mesoscopic structure is synchronization. Several phenomena…
Determining spatial distributions of species and communities are key objectives of ecology and conservation. Joint species distribution models use multi-species detection-nondetection data to estimate species and community distributions.…
Collective action and group formation are fundamental behaviors among both organisms cooperating to maximize their fitness, and people forming socioeconomic organizations. Researchers have extensively explored social interaction structures…
Collective decision-making is a widespread phenomenon in both biological and artificial systems, where individuals reach a consensus through social interactions. While traditional models of opinion dynamics and contagion focus on pairwise…