United States
£ GBP
Fish travel in schools, birds migrate in flocks, honeybees swarm, and ants build trails. How and why do these collective behaviours occur?
Exploring how coordinated group patterns emerge from individual interactions, this book reveals why animals produce group behaviours and examines their evolution across a range of species. Providing a synthesis of mathematical modelling, theoretical biology, and experimental work, the author investigates how animals move and arrive together, how they transfer information, how they make decisions and synchronize their activities, and how they build collective structures.
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: Coming Together 14
Chapter 3: Information Transfer 44
Chapter 4: Making Decisions 77
Chapter 5: Moving Together 101
Chapter 6: Synchronization 130
Chapter 7: Structures 151
Chapter 8: Regulation 173
Chapter 9: Complicated Interactions 198
Chapter 10: The Evolution of Co-operation 223
Chapter 11: Conclusions 253
References 259
Index 293
David J. T. Sumpter is a professor of applied mathematics at Uppsala University in Sweden.
"This is a comprehensive, insightful, and fascinating introduction to how, and why, animals behave as a collective. From swarming ants and locusts, to flocking birds and human crowds, this modern synthesis is a must read for biologists, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists who seek to understand the underlying mechanisms and evolutionary principles of animal grouping. Both scholarly and accessible, this book provides us a tantalizing overview of one of the most exciting new fields in biology – collective animal behavior."
– Iain D. Couzin, Princeton University
"This well-organized, engaging, and authoritative book demonstrates that significant strides have been made in the mathematical models examining the collective behaviors of animals. No other book draws the disparate literature in this field together. This in itself would be an achievement, but Sumpter offers more: insightful comparisons between models, noteworthy bridges between mechanistic and functional schools of model building, and illuminating discussions of models' successes and limitations."
– Graeme Ruxton, University of Glasgow
"This book fills an important niche that will be of interest to scientists across disciplines. Clear and well-illustrated, this is an excellent learning and teaching resource."
– Darren P. Croft, University of Exeter
