Collective behaviour in 480-million-year-old trilobite arthropods from Morocco.

ABSTRACT: Interactions and coordination between conspecific individuals have produced a remarkable variety of collective behaviours. This co-operation occurs in vertebrate and invertebrate animals and is well expressed in the group flight of birds, fish shoals and highly organized activities of social insects. How individuals interact and why they co-operate to constitute group-level patterns has been extensively studied in extant animals through a variety mechanistic, functional and theoretical approaches. Although collective and social behaviour evolved through natural selection over millions of years, its origin and early history has remained largely unknown. In-situ monospecific linear clusters of trilobite arthropods from the lower Ordovician (ca 480 Ma) of Morocco are interpreted here as resul

SUBMITTER: Vannier J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6797724 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature