Collective behavior as a research area investigates how large ensembles of interacting agents—such as cells, animals, humans, or artificial units—generate emergent spatiotemporal patterns and coordinated dynamics that cannot be trivially inferred from individual-level rules. It integrates concepts and methods from statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, complex systems theory, network science, and computational modeling to characterize phenomena such as synchronization, swarming, flocking, consensus formation, and phase transitions in social or biological systems. Research focuses on identifying local interaction rules, quantifying macroscopic order parameters, understanding robustness and criticality, and developing predictive, often multi-scale, models of group-level organization and decision-making.
Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) has published two scientific studies presenting the most comprehensive documentation of a sperm whale birth ever recorded and the first quantitative evidence of cooperative birth ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 26, 2026
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In recent years, scientists have carefully deciphered details of the honey bee "waggle dance," which is an advanced form of social communication in the animal kingdom. University of California San Diego biologists and their ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 23, 2026
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New research from the University of St Andrews reports sperm whales headbutting one another. The behavior was captured on film and described scientifically for the first time, confirming accounts by 19th century mariners ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 23, 2026
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Several insect species, including ants, honeybees and termites, live in highly organized societies, also known as social insect colonies. Insects living in these colonies can take on different roles, such as reproducing, ...
For ants, the ability to instantly distinguish nestmates from outsiders who might hijack the colony is crucial. Now, a new study shows that the system that ants use to determine who belongs in the colony is far more flexible ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 20, 2026
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An interdisciplinary team of authors from Canada, Austria, the U.S. and Germany has outlined how immuno-epidemiology and individual decision-making on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) can be understood jointly in the ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 17, 2026
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Sharks are often viewed as solitary, but a new study—carried out on the Shark Reef Marine Reserve in Fiji—has found that rather than mixing at random, bull sharks have "active social preferences" and choose their social partners. ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 16, 2026
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In the middle of the old-growth forests of Congaree National Park in South Carolina, fireflies put on an otherworldly display every May. Thousands of male insects belonging to the species Photuris frontalis flash together ...
Ecology
Mar 13, 2026
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It's long been assumed that for an organism to learn, remember or draw conclusions, it needs a brain. But mounting evidence, including a recent Cognitive Science study, challenges that assumption, suggesting that neurons ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 13, 2026
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Some single-celled organisms are known to transition to multicellularity during their lifetimes, usually either by cloning themselves or when many similar cells come together to form a larger multicellular organism. A new ...
