Just came across this nice study by Davidescu et al.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2206163120
Larger bodies in the placozoan Trichoplax show less coordination across cells.
"We quantify the trade-off between increasing size and coordination in a multicellular animal with a decentralized anatomy that shows evidence of criticality and hypothesize as to the implications of this on the evolution hierarchical structures such as nervous systems in larger organisms."
6-May-2026
How do #climate extremes alter animal societies?
A 33-year study of wild capuchin #monkeys in #CostaRica shows how the costs and benefits of living in a group are reshaped by climate fluctuations
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1126744
#science #climatecatastrophe #conservation #collectiveBehaviour #ethology #ecology
Climate extremes reshape the benefits of group living: A 33-year study of wild capuchin monkeys shows that droughts and heavy rains can disrupt the balance between cooperation and competition within animal societies. Bigger groups arenβt always better: While large groups usually offset competition by dominating space and resources, extreme climate events erode these advantages and increase the costs of living together. Changing climates may alter animal societies: As extreme events become more frequent, social groups may fragment or reorganize, potentially reshaping population structure and ecosystem dynamics.
ππ£οΈ It's today!
Join us in just a few hours for our seminar "What we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inference" with Dr. Anna Dornhaus on YouTube! π₯π
Discover the hidden algorithms behind collective behavior in social insect societies. See you soon!
π
Time: Today, 2pm GMT
πΊ Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oioL9fRzcI0
π£ SEMINAR SERIES 2026 β 1 week to go!π£
Join us Tuesday 28 April at 2pm GMT for the first seminar of 2026!
ππ Dr. Anna Dornhaus (Uni of Arizona) on βWhat we learned about the world from studying collective behavior: algorithms, replicators, and strong inferenceβ
π Live on YouTube β https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oioL9fRzcI0
β Free & open to all!
#AnimalBehaviour #OnlineSeminar #CollectiveBehaviour #social_insects
Special issue: The evolution of collective intelligence
"This theme issue brings together scholars from multiple disciplines to explore the evolutionary origins of collective intelligence, its role in contemporary societies, and how emerging technologies may reshape it in the future."
π To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Interface, @promanczuk and I wrote a perspective on the future of interdisciplinary research in collective animal behaviour.
Anticipating two decades of research was slightly intimidating... but we gave it a go!
π (open access) https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2025.0582
#CollectiveBehaviour #AnimalBehaviour #Ecology #Modelling #Physics
24-Sep-2025
SNU-KHU researchers jointly develop a framework to manipulate emergent #behavior and decode real-world #flocking
Artificial neural networks learn local interaction rules for collective motion / - This framework makes emergent behavior programmable, enabling smooth switches between patterns, with applications to robot swarms and the study of animal groups
Researchers at Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University report a framework to control collective motions, such as ring, clumps, mill, flock, by training a physics-informed AI to learn the local rules that govern interactions among individuals. The approach specifies when an ordered state should appear from random initial conditions and tunes geometric features (average radius, cluster size, flock size). Furthermore, trained on published GPS trajectories of real pigeons (Nagy et al., 2010), the model uncovers interaction mechanisms observed in real flocks.
The third week of the Konstanz School of Collective Behaviour 2025 (#KSCB2025) starts with a #keynote by Ofer Feinerman on the application of #physics in #biology, #cognition and #CollectiveBehaviour.
The ninth day of the Konstanz School of Collective Behaviour 2025 (#KSCB2025) starts with a #tutorial by Wataru Toyokawa @WataruToyokawa on #ReinforcementLearning, #SocialLearning and #CollectiveBehaviour.
The afternoon session of the fifth day of the Konstanz School of Collective Behaviour 2025 (#KSCB2025) is devoted to a #keynote by Liang Li on #robots and #CollectiveBehaviour.
Gaspar Jekely
michael
Animal Behaviour Live
Valentin Lecheval
Christophe Bousquet