Collective Behavior: From Cells to Animals to Us

Dynamic problem solving

Self-organisationPosted by David Sumpter Thu, March 25, 2010 23:10:09
I have spent this week meeting in Pearl Beach outside Sydney with the other members of our 'Dynamic Problem Solving' in biological systems team. This is a collaboration between the research labs of Madeleine Beekman, Toshi Nakagaki, Martin Middendorf and myself. The very clever postdocs and PhD students on the project have been looking at how different organisms solve allocation problems, with an aim to developing computer algorithms. It has been a fun project and this week many of the exciting results from the project have been written up. Most excitingly, we will soon(ish) reveal to the world what 'collective' organism is the best dynamic problem solver!

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Negative Feedback

Self-organisationPosted by Audrey Dussutour Sat, March 20, 2010 14:36:52
Negative feedback play an important, though often underappreciated, role in self-organizing behaviors within superorganisms! This is why this paper is really interesting :

JC Nieh 2010 "Negative Feedback Signal That Is Triggered by Peril Curbs Honey Bee Recruitment " Current Biology 20:310-315

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