Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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SYSO: Collective Social Dynamics from Animals to Humans

SYSO 1: Collective social dynamics from animals to humans

SYSO 1.4: Invited Talk

Thursday, September 8, 2022, 11:15–11:45, H1

Self-organization, Criticality and Collective Information Processing in Animal Groups — •Pawel Romanczuk — Insitute for Theoretical Biology, Department of Biology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany — Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin — Research Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence”, Berlin

Collective behavior of animals is a fascinating example of self-organization in biology. In contrast to non-living physical systems, collective animal behavior and the underlying social interactions are the result of evolutionary adaptations. Being and acting in a group is believed to confer fitness benefits to individuals, for example by promoting exchange of social information, accurate collective decisions, or protection from predators. In this context, it has been argued that animal collectives should operate in a special parameter region close to critical points, i.e. close to phase transitions between different collective states, where various aspects of collective information processing become optimal. Here, we will investigate the criticality hypothesis for animal collective behavior from different angles by combining model simulations together with laboratory and field experiments on collective predator response in fish.