Collective personalities in honeybee colonies are linked to colony fitness
Personality differences (i.e. consistent between-individual differences in behaviour) play an important role in the lives of humans and other animals, influencing both their day-to-day actions and their long-term reproductive success. For organisms living in highly structured groups of related individuals, such as colonies of social insects, personalities could also emerge at the group level. However, […]
Optical Flow, Flock Behaviour and Chicken Welfare
We used a combination of inexpensive camera equipment and statistical analysis of optical flow patterns to analyse the behaviour of 24 commercial broiler (meat) chicken flocks, Gallus gallus. Individual birds were not tracked or marked but the skew and kurtosis of flow patterns produced by the collective movements of the flocks were significantly correlated with […]
Resource Influence on the Form of Fur Rubbing Behaviour in White-Faced Capuchins
Self-medicative behaviours have been largely documented in vertebrates and, in particular, the use of plants for pharmacological purposes has been mainly reported in primates. White-faced capuchins are known to rub specifically chosen plants and other substances on their fur. To better understand the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon and investigate the influence of different plant resources […]
Wolf-Pack (Canis lupus) Hunting Strategies Emerge From Simple Rules in Computational Simulations
We have produced computational simulations of multi-agent systems in which wolf agents chase prey agents. We show that two simple decentralized rules controlling the movement of each wolf are enough to reproduce the main features of the wolf-packhunting behavior: tracking the prey, carrying out the pursuit, and encircling the prey until it stops moving. The […]
Adult presence augments juvenile collective foraging in social spiders
The presence of a few highly influential individuals, so called ‘keystone individuals’, is thought to influence group dynamics and success in a diverse variety of animal societies. Although older, experienced individuals often occupy keystone roles such as leader or dominant individual, few studies have performed manipulations to study their impact. Here, we investigate how juvenile […]