Costs and benefits of social relationships in the collective motion of bird flocks

Ling, Hangjian; Mclvor, Guillam E.; Vaart, Kasper van der; Vaughan, Richard; Thornton, Alex; Ouellette, Nicholas T.

doi:10.1038/s41559-019-0891-5

Cited by 69 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…This may arise from physiological and behavioural differences linked to social attraction [62] and the number of neighbours an individual responds to [63], as well as from differences in body shape or manoeuvrability (especially for groups moving in water or air). Furthermore, individuals with stronger social affiliations tend to cluster within groups and occupy more posterior positions, such as jackdaws (Corvus monedula) flying in pair formation in mixed-species flocks [64,65]. Also, individual heterogeneity in sensory performance may affect spatial positioning, such as the cataract formation induced by certain parasites [66].…”

Section: Within-group Positioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Phenotypes may also opt to remain solitary, such as those with high resource requirements to avoid competition with groupmates. As grouping with others can be more energetically efficient than staying alone [64,88], animals with low energy reserves or low aerobic scope may be more compelled to (stay in their) group to reduce energetic costs of movement. Importantly, the overall size of the group shifts the costs and benefits and thereby the relative trade-offs that motivate individual phenotypes to join the group.…”

Section: Fission-fusion Dynamics and Among-group Assortmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Role of Individual Heterogeneity in Collective Animal Behaviour

Jolles

King

Killen

2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

166

185

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Social grouping is omnipresent in the animal kingdom. Considerable research has focused on understanding how animal groups form and function, including how collective behaviour emerges via self-organising mechanisms and how phenotypic variation drives the behaviour and functioning of animal groups. However, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of the role of phenotypic variation in collective animal behaviour. Here we present a common framework to quantify individual heterogeneity and synthesise the literature to systematically explain and predict its role in collective behaviour across species, contexts, and traits. We show that individual heterogeneity provides a key intermediary mechanism with broad consequences for sociality (e.g., group structure, functioning), ecology (e.g., response to environmental change), and evolution. We also outline a roadmap for future research. The Effects of Phenotypic Variation in Collective Animal Behaviour: A Rising Topic Social grouping (see Glossary) is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, ranging from pairs of individuals to enormous aggregations and structured communities, and short-lived and unstable group membership to long-lasting and fixed group compositions. Animals time and coordinate their behaviour with others to gain potential benefits, including increased mating opportunities, improved foraging efficiency, lower predation risk, and reduced energetic costs [1,2]. These benefits are realised through individual-level behavioural processes that shape and are shaped by the social structure, leadership, movement dynamics, and collective performance of groups [2-4]. A key goal of collective behaviour research is therefore to understand and predict how collective patterns emerge from the behaviour and social interactions of individuals. Scientists have long focused on identifying universal mechanisms underlying collective behaviour. Through a combination of theoretical and experimental work it has become clear that many complex collective behavioural patterns can emerge via self-organising processes from individuals using simple interaction rules [3-5]. However, individuals in groups are not all equal, and the phenotypic variation that is selectively maintained in populations results in individual heterogeneity within and among groups. Considerable theoretical (Box 1) and empirical evidence, from a broad range of taxa, suggests that such heterogeneity plays a fundamental role in collective animal behaviour. For example, the synchronised movements and social structure of fish schools and bird flocks [6,7], the leadership and collective decision-making of whale pods and primate troops [8,9], the colony performance of social spiders and honey bees [10,11], and the among-group assortment of ungulates [12] are all mediated by within-group individual heterogeneity. While previous theoretical work discusses the important evolutionary implications of phenotypic variation among grouping animals [13], we still lack a unified mechanistic understanding of individual heterogenei...

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Section: Within-group Positioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fission-fusion Dynamics and Among-group Assortmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Individual Heterogeneity in Collective Animal Behaviour

Jolles

King

Killen

2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

166

185

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…figure S4), we find that birds prefer to fly side by side, in that the most probable location for a neighbouring bird was at dWing=1.0 m (2.8 jackdaw body lengths) and dMove=0. In a previous study [55], we found that these anisotropic spatial distributions of neighbours become isotropic for large topological distance (as in starlings [48]), a feature that we used to estimate the interaction range. We found that birds not part of a bonded pair typically interacted with 7 to 8 neighbours [55].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…These interactions are treated as social "forces" [43] imposed by the presence of nearby neighbours that thus determine the acceleration of each agent. Although many empirical measurements of bird flocks have been made [44,45,[54][55][56][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53], the fundamental interaction rules assumed in the models have still not been fully tested. In particular, the effective attractive and repulsive forces that birds experience while flying in large flocks has not been studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Current research also tells us little about the mechanisms governing the side-by-side neighbour structure seen in flocks of small birds (e.g. pigeons, starlings or jackdaws) [44,48,49,55], which in turn may determine the overall shape of flocks. One hypothesis, proposed in previous studies [44,62], is that the mechanism of short-range repulsion determines the local neighbour distribution.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Local interactions and their group-level consequences in flocking jackdaws

et al. 2019

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As one of nature's most striking examples of collective behaviour, bird flocks have attracted extensive research. However, we still lack an understanding of the attractive and repulsive forces that govern interactions between individuals within flocks and how these forces influence neighbours' relative positions and ultimately determine the shape of flocks. We address these issues by analysing the three-dimensional movements of wild jackdaws ( Corvus monedula ) in flocks containing 2–338 individuals. We quantify the social interaction forces in large, airborne flocks and find that these forces are highly anisotropic. The long-range attraction in the direction perpendicular to the movement direction is stronger than that along it, and the short-range repulsion is generated mainly by turning rather than changing speed. We explain this phenomenon by considering wingbeat frequency and the change in kinetic and gravitational potential energy during flight, and find that changing the direction of movement is less energetically costly than adjusting speed for birds. Furthermore, our data show that collision avoidance by turning can alter local neighbour distributions and ultimately change the group shape. Our results illustrate the macroscopic consequences of anisotropic interaction forces in bird flocks, and help to draw links between group structure, local interactions and the biophysics of animal locomotion.

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Collective Behaviors of Active Matter Learning from Natural Taxes Across Scales

Pumera

et al. 2022

Advanced Materials

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Figure 1. Cognate collective taxis behaviors realized by organisms and robots across scales. A) Collective migration of particle robots and cells. Loosely coupled particles present collective phototaxis (left). Reproduced with permission. [11] Copyright 2019, Springer Nature. Cells perform collective migration in 3D environments (right). Reproduced with permission. [4] Copyright 2018, Springer Nature. B) Self-assembly of robots and bacteria. A swarm of 1024 kilobots form a star-like pattern (left). Reproduced with permission. [14] Copyright 2014, AAAS. A swarm of E. coli cells form a right-handed colony (right). Scale bar: 5 mm. Reproduced with permission. [15] Copyright 2011, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. C) Collective taxes of macroscopic organisms (e.g., fishes, birds, and ants) and robots. D) Collective taxes of microorganisms (e.g., sperms, [19] cells, and bacteria [20] ) and microrobots. [21] E) Connection constructed by ants and NPs. Weaver ants establish a bridge to connect leaves (left). Reproduced with permission. [7] Copyright 2002, Springer Nature. Magnetic NPs with gold functionalization connect two broken electrodes in a targeted position (right). Reproduced with permission. [16] Copyright 2019, American Chemical Society. F) Avoidance of predators. A bait ball of fishes is formed during the hunting of a sea lion (left). Reproduced with permission. [22] Copyright 2019, Science and Information Organization. The biomimetic predator-prey behavior in a binary system of active micromotors (right). Reproduced with permission. [17] Copyright 2019, American Chemical Society.

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Costs and benefits of social relationships in the collective motion of bird flocks

Cited by 69 publications

References 51 publications

The Role of Individual Heterogeneity in Collective Animal Behaviour

The Role of Individual Heterogeneity in Collective Animal Behaviour

Local interactions and their group-level consequences in flocking jackdaws

Collective Behaviors of Active Matter Learning from Natural Taxes Across Scales

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