Collective sensing: How animal groups scale noisy gradients

Sridhar, V. H. and Weissing, F. and Couzin, I. D. (2016) Collective sensing: How animal groups scale noisy gradients. Research Project 2 (major thesis), Ecology and Evolution.

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Abstract

In the natural world, individuals constantly face the challenge of acquiring, interpreting and responding to complex sensory information. This is especially challenging when in- dividuals must navigate heterogeneous environments. Recent empirical evidence suggests that animals may deal with this challenge by living in groups and processing information collectively. While these collective properties are manifested at a group level, they are an outcome of decisions made by individuals. In general, it is unclear how selection on behavioural rules adopted by individuals leads to evolution of group level properties such as collective information processing and distributed sensing. In this model, agents fol- low experimentally inspired decision rules used by schooling golden shiners (Notemigonus crysoleucas). Individual behavioural response to the environment along with social re- sponse provides groups the ability to filter high frequency spatial noise and collectively track a moving environmental cue. By varying interaction ranges of individuals, I also show an optimum in the inter-individual distance where groups detect large scale patterns and filter noise.

Item Type:	Thesis (Research Project 2 (major thesis))
Degree programme:	Ecology and Evolution
Thesis type:	Research Project 2 (major thesis)
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2018 08:10
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2018 08:10
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/13629

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