A multiscale review of the dynamics of collective behaviour: From rapid responses to ontogeny and evolution

Christos C Ioannou*, Kate L Laskowski

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalLiterature review (Academic Journal)

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Collective behaviours, such as flocking in birds or decision making by bee colonies, are some of the most intriguing behavioural phenomena in the animal kingdom. The study of collective behaviour focuses on the interactions between individuals within groups, which typically occur over close ranges and short timescales, and how these interactions drive larger scale properties such as group size, information transfer within groups and group-level decision making. To date, however, most studies have focused on snapshots, typically studying collective behaviour over short timescales up to minutes or hours. However, being a biological trait, much longer timescales are important in animal collective behaviour, particularly how individuals change over their lifetime (the domain of developmental biology) and how individuals change from one generation to the next (the domain of evolutionary biology). Here, we give an overview of collective behaviour across timescales from the short to the long, illustrating how a full understanding of this behaviour in animals requires much more research attention on its developmental and evolutionary biology. Our review forms the prologue of this special issue, which addresses and pushes forward understanding the development and evolution of collective behaviour, encouraging a new direction for collective behaviour research.
Original languageEnglish
Article number20220059
Pages (from-to)1-13
JournalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume378
Issue number1874
Early online date20 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Apr 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/P012639/1 awarded to C.C.I. and the National Science Foundation (IOS-2100625 to K.L.L.).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors.

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