SELF-ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS IN FLOCKS AND SCHOOLS
Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Animal groups or cellular ensembles represent fascinating examples of
self-organized biological systems. In contrast to non-living physical
systems, self-organized biological collectives are the result of
evolutionary adaptations. But collective behavior is also always subject
to constraints set by the physics of the interaction mechanisms and
corresponding self-organized dynamical structure. Our general aim is to
explore this interplay between self-organization and function in
collective behavior in biology with an approach rooted in statistical
physics, stochastic systems and network theory. Classical models of
collective behavior inspired by statistical physics often implicitly
assume that individuals have access to state variables not directly
encoded it their sensory input, such es exact velocity vectors of all
neighbors within a finite interaction range. It becomes more and more
apparent that the classical models need to be revised to incorporate
constraints of individuals perception, i.e., how internal and external
information are acquired and processed, leading to novel types of models
and unexpected dynamical behavior at macroscopic scales. In this
context, I will discuss different aspects of our recent work: 1)
Attention trade-offs in flocking in complex environments under
sensory/cognitive constraints. 2) A minimal purely vision-based model of
collective movement, as well as 3) optimal predator response and
criticality.
