Individual and collective encoding of risk in animal groups.

ABSTRACT: The need to make fast decisions under risky and uncertain conditions is a widespread problem in the natural world. While there has been extensive work on how individual organisms dynamically modify their behavior to respond appropriately to changing environmental conditions (and how this is encoded in the brain), we know remarkably little about the corresponding aspects of collective information processing in animal groups. For example, many groups appear to show increased "sensitivity" in the presence of perceived threat, as evidenced by the increased frequency and magnitude of repeated cascading waves of behavioral change often observed in fish schools and bird flocks under such circumstances. How such context-dependent changes in collective sensitivity are mediated, however, is unknown.

SUBMITTER: Sosna MMG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6789631 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature