Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes

External information processing in biological collectives: the role of the environment on collective dynamics across scales

Collective behavior in multi-agent biological systems has been studied by scientists of different disciplines: biology, physics and mathematics are some examples. Impressive phenomena can be found in nature at different scales: pattern formation of bacterial colonies at the microscopical scales [1], up to collective dynamics of sheep [2], fish [3] or birds [4]. In this talk I will discuss how biological collectives integrate information from the environment and how this process might impact on the dynamics of the group. The goal is to highlight the importance of the surroundings (and the related fluctuations) on the displayed collective behavior in biological systems. I will use three different systems as examples: bacteria [5], fish [6] and sheep [7], that display different collective dynamics across scales.

References

[1] U. Börner, A. Deutsch, H. Reichenbach, and M. Bär, “Rippling patterns in aggregates of myxobacteria arise from cell-cell collisions,” Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 89, p. 078101, Jul 2002.

[2] F. Ginelli, F. Peruani, M.-H. Pillot, H. Chaté, G. Theraulaz, and R. Bon, “Intermittent collective dynamics emerge from conflicting imperatives in sheep herds,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112, no. 41, pp. 12729–12734, 2015.

[3] M.M.G.Sosna,C.R.Twomey,J.Bak-Coleman,W.Poel,B.C.Daniels,P.Romanczuk,andI.D.Couzin, “Individual and collective encoding of risk in animal groups,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116, no. 41, pp. 20556–20561, 2019.

[4] M. Ballerini, N. Cabibbo, R. Candelier, A. Cavagna, E. Cisbani, I. Giardina, V. Lecomte, A. Orlandi, G. Parisi, A. Procaccini, M. Viale, and V. Zdravkovic, “Interaction ruling animal collective behavior depends on topological rather than metric distance: Evidence from a field study,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 105, no. 4, pp. 1232–1237, 2008.

[5] L. Gómez Nava, R. Großmann, and F. Peruani, “Markovian robots: Minimal navigation strategies for active particles,” Phys. Rev. E, vol. 97, p. 042604, Apr 2018.

[6] L. Gómez Nava, R. T. Lange, P. P. Klamser, H. Sprekeler, and P. Romanczuk, “Information spread en- hanced by criticality in high-responsive groups of fish,” preprint.

[7] L. Gómez Nava, R. Bon, and F. Peruani, “Democratic leadership controls intermittent collective motion and line formation,” submitted.