Colin Torney (University of Exeter)
Abstract. Animal groups in nature are a classic example of a complex system in which individual behavior and social interaction scale to produce a collective response to external stimuli. In these systems there is an interplay between leadership, imitation, and environmental cues that determines the accuracy of group decisions. In this talk I will present some stylized models of information flow in interacting systems and show how evolution may drive these systems to unresponsive states. I will also discuss the methods we're using to investigate these questions in the field, including tools to collect video footage, computational methods to locate animals within images, and statistical techniques to infer behavioral rules from movement data.