Research

Bacterial “zorbing” is a newly discovered form of collective social movement where spherical, biofilm-like microcolonies of Flavobacterium johnsoniae “walk” and migrate together across surfaces.

Young chimpanzees develop increasingly distinctive population-specific vocal patterns as they mature. Researchers comparing grunts, whimpers and laughter from two geographically separated communities found that some differences were detectable in infancy while others became stronger during juvenile development.

Cardiocondyla ants can dynamically switch between nutrients supplied by an ancient bacterial symbiont and their own alternative metabolic pathway. This is a strong natural example of graceful degradation and functional redundancy.

Collective animals can communicate indirectly through the fluid disturbances their own movements leave behind. This extends stigmergy beyond persistent structures such as ant pheromone trails or termite construction.

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.

Bumble bee colonies can reorganise from a queen-centred hierarchy into a more decentralised social network when the queen disappears. Researchers tracked more than 80 million interactions in matched queenright and queenless Bombus impatiens colonies.

A minimal flocking model shows that a directional change initiated by one agent can propagate across an entire group at approximately constant speed through asymmetric local interactions alone.

Bird flocks achieve coordinated flight through local interactions among individuals rather than a leader directing the group’s movement. In a newly listed Oxford talk, collective-behaviour researcher Steve Portugal brings together biomechanics, physiology and social interaction to explain how birds maintain cohesion, move through complex landscapes and balance aerodynamic costs against social benefits.

Plant roots can detect damage to a neighbouring plant almost immediately and redirect their own growth away from the disturbance.

Three-spined sticklebacks compensate for murky water by becoming more socially coordinated rather than continuing to use the same shoaling rules.

Researchers have developed a way to infer which neighbours an animal is actually responding to directly from collective-movement data. The method tests combinations of interaction distance and viewing angle, then measures how strongly the average heading of candidate neighbours predicts an individual’s subsequent direction.

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.