17 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA 02138

Prof. Iain D. Couzin

Director, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz, Germany

Director, Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Germany

Chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Germany

 

Abstract

In 1905, the biologist Edmund Selous marveled at the sight of a flock of starlings in flight, describing it as “they circle; now dense like a polished roof, now disseminated like the meshes of some vast all-heaven-sweeping net…wheeling, rending, darting…a madness in the sky.” He speculated, “They must think collectively, all at the same time, or at least in streaks or patches — a square yard or so of an idea, a flash out of so many brains.” Over a century later, we still have much to learn about how social interactions connect individual brains, enabling sensing and information processing in mobile animal groups, such as swarming locusts, flocking birds, or schooling fish. Using a combination of modeling, automated tracking, computational reconstruction of sensory information, and immersive ‘holographic’ virtual reality (VR) experiments with fruit flies, locusts, and zebrafish, I will reveal that there exist geometric principles underlying collective sensing and decision-making. These principles span multiple scales of biological organization, from neural dynamics to individual decision-making, and from individuals to collectives. In doing so I will present a minimal cognitive (‘ring attractor’) model that can account for how collective behavior emerges in nature, and highlight the challenges of scaling from individual to collective behavior (including potential limitations of employing classical statistical mechanics to do so). Additionally, I will demonstrate how we are increasingly able to study collectives in the wild, as well as how our findings can inspire human-engineered systems, including robust bio-mimetic control laws for collective robotics.

 

Bio

Iain Couzin is Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and a Professor and Director (Speaker) of the German Research Foundation (DFG) Excellence Cluster “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Previously he was a full Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. His work aims to reveal the fundamental principles that underlie evolved collective behavior, and consequently his research includes the study of a wide range of biological systems, from neural collectives to insect swarms, fish schools and primate groups. In recognition of his research he has been recipient of the Searle Scholar Award in 2008, top 5 most cited papers of the decade in animal behavior research 1999-2010, National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award in 2012, the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2013, a Web of Science Global Highly Cited Researcher 2018-2022 and 2024, the Lagrange Prize (for fundamental contributions to complexity science) in 2019, the Falling Walls Life Sciences Award and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (Germany’s highest research honor) in 2022, the Rothschild Distinguished Fellowship at the University of Cambridge in 2023, and the Fyssen International Prize in 2024.

0 people are interested in this event