Swarm-Intelligence

Simple information constraints can push biological collectives into self-reinforcing consensus that becomes detached from the outside world. Cornell researchers modelled agents such as animals in groups and cells in tissues, relaxing two unrealistic assumptions: that individuals know the evidence behind neighbours’ decisions and can attend to every neighbour simultaneously.

Schooling glassfish can infer danger from the behaviour of nearby fish even when they never see the threat themselves. This exposes a remarkably economical distributed warning mechanism.

Humbug damselfish offer researchers a natural system for studying how threat information propagates through a group without every fish independently detecting the danger.

Social insects provide concrete examples of collectives enforcing system-level constraints through local behaviour even when no individual can measure the state of the whole group.

A field demonstration has used a coordinated autonomous drone swarm to intercept another swarm by forming a three-dimensional barrier in its path.

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.

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.

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.