Explainer

Bacterial collectives combine signalling, division of labour, environmental memory and local decision rules to achieve capabilities unavailable to individual cells.

In part one of this series, we looked at a simple example of cellular automata in the form of the Game of Life.

Dodder vines may function as biological communication bridges linking otherwise separate plants through direct vascular connections. Cuscuta forms haustoria that penetrate host tissues, but those connections carry considerably more than water and nutrients.

Reptiles use surprisingly adaptable acoustic signals to identify individuals, synchronize group behaviour and modify messages when environmental conditions change. Male gharials produce distinctive underwater pop sequences that appear to encode individual identity, while crocodilian and turtle embryos vocalize from inside their eggs, helping siblings synchronize hatching and nest departure.

Act I Part 1: The Game with No Player The adaptive-emergent blog has over 100 posts on swarm and natural intelligence: communication even though some of these describe the most basic microbial life.

Researchers from the University of Michigan set out to discover whether scientists could get round that lack of data by piggy-backing on research carried out on humans.

Part 4: The dangling conversation In the previous article, we saw bacterial populations defend themselves collectively. Cyanobacteria formed protective flocs, while dying E.

A game theory model examines how collective intelligence can arise when each individual observes only one part of a complex environment.

In the previous article, we saw that bacteria may encounter several overlapping signals. Different messages can indicate neighbours, competitors, changing conditions or competing courses of action.

To Which Quorum Should a Bacterium Listen? In the first article on microbial communication, we saw how bacteria release chemical signals that accumulate as a population grows.