Marina Papadopoulou (University of Tuscia), “Behavioural rules underlying self-organized animal collectives”

From the foraging of ungulates and primates to the bait balls of fish and the murmurations of starlings, the dynamics of animal groups fascinate us with the mystery of their underlying social interactions. Identifying unique and common traits across systems can help us understand the self-organized mechanisms of their emergence, as well as the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape this diversity. In this talk, I will showcase ongoing projects on the collective behaviour of several species of vertebrates, such as schools of Amazon mollies, flocks of European starlings, and troops of chacma baboons, aiming to understand the cognitive rules involved in the dynamics of these collectives. Specifically, I will focus on inter- and intra- specific variation in collective motion and decision-making, the role of individual heterogeneity, and the emergence of complex patterns of collective escape, with methodological details on the analysis of empirical data, the use of robotic predators and conspecifics, and the development of data-inspired agent-based models.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash