Event:

From the foraging of ungulates and primates to the bait balls of fish and the murmurations of starlings, the dynamics of animal groups fascinate us with the mystery of their underlying social interactions. Identifying unique and common traits across systems can help us understand the self-organized mechanisms of their emergence, as well as the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape this diversity. In this talk, I will showcase ongoing projects on the collective behaviour of several species of vertebrates, such as schools of Amazon mollies, flocks of European starlings, and troops of chacma baboons, emphasizing on the importance of comparisons across systems and the value of computational models and bio-inspired robotics in understanding the cognitive rules involved in the dynamics of animal collectives. Specifically, I will focus on inter- and intra- specific variation in collective motion and decision-making, the role of individual heterogeneity in collective behaviour, and the emergence of complex patterns of collective escape, with methodological details on the analysis of empirical data, the use of robotic predators and conspecifics, and the development of data-inspired agent-based models. Finally, I will highlight the application of our output in the field of swarm robotics and wildlife conservation.