Collective Animal Behavior

How and why animals produce group behaviors

Fish travel in schools, birds migrate in flocks, honeybees swarm, and ants build trails. How and why do these collective behaviors occur? Exploring how coordinated group patterns emerge from individual interactions, Collective Animal Behavior reveals why animals produce group behaviors and examines their evolution across a range of species.

Providing a synthesis of mathematical modeling, theoretical biology, and experimental work, David Sumpter 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. Sumpter constructs a unified appreciation of how different group-living species coordinate their behaviors and why natural selection has produced these groups. For the first time, the book combines traditional approaches to behavioral ecology with ideas about self-organization and complex systems from physics and mathematics. Sumpter offers a guide for working with key models in this area along with case studies of their application, and he shows how ideas about animal behavior can be applied to understanding human social behavior.

Containing a wealth of accessible examples as well as qualitative and quantitative features, Collective Animal Behavior will interest behavioral ecologists and all scientists studying complex systems.

"I enjoyed reading Collective Animal Behavior, sharing it with students working on undergraduate summer research, and finding a few nicely covered topics relevant to my own research. . . . Collective Animal Behavior stands out for several reasons. At a technical level, it provides wide coverage of both mechanistic modeling, which is used to connect individual rules with group behavior, and functional analysis, which explains why some behaviors might confer advantages over others. Stylistically, Sumpter synthesizes perspectives, comparisons, critiques, and examples of human and animal behavior into his book. He expresses his opinions directly and presents provocative case studies."---Leah Edelstein-Keshet, Physics Today

"This book is very important not only for biologists but also for decision makers. . . . It is time that decision makers learn the principles of collective animal behavior for the benefits of humans. I thank the author for a very useful book."---E. Ahmed, Zentralblatt MATH

"Collective Animal Behavior provides an excellent synthesis of mathematical modeling and biology with experimental and theoretical studies. . . . [T]his volume does come with a homepage (www.collective-behavior.com/Site/Home.html), and the author has generously made many of the models he constructed available to those who want to run their own simulations. If the author keeps this portal up to date and his blog active, I am confident that readers interested in collective behavior, modeling, artificial intelligence, behavioral ecology, and evolution will enjoy not just the book but the complete interactive package."---Istvan Karsai, BioScience

"By exploring the way in which certain animal groups coordinate among themselves, Collective Animal Behavior offers a great deal of insight for managers seeking to better understand how collective behavior takes shape within a company. Using concrete examples, Sumpter . . . offers a clear account whose scope extends well beyond the natural sciences."

"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