Complexity Research in Animal Behaviour

Satellite @ CCS 2024 - Exeter, 3 September 2024

Animal groups can be considered as complex systems of interacting entities (the individuals). The collective behaviour of animal groups is an emergent outcome of the traits of individuals within the group and their social interactions. The group- and population-level structures and dynamics that result have profound implications for key ecological (e.g., infectious disease transmission) and evolutionary processes, meaning that they are of great fundamental and applied interest.

While massive steps forward have happened in applying complex systems approaches —such as social network analysis— to study animal behaviour, there remains limited exchange between the research fields. Not only could more interdisciplinary work contribute greatly to answering exciting ecological and evolutionary questions, the datasets now available from non-human animals offer great potential to test key theoretical ideas in complex systems research. Therefore, we are very happy to announce the first edition of Complexity Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB): a cross-disciplinary satellite meeting to encourage greater exchange between these fields within the Conference on Complex Systems.

Topics

Animal social networks

Collective animal behaviour

Animal communication

Animal cognition

Disease ecology

Evolutionary biology

Studies that combine complexity and animal behaviour that do not fall within the above are also welcome!

Invited speakers

Sam Ellis (Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, University of Exeter)

Friends, fitness and evolution in a complex world

Social structures are complex systems: individuals make social connections, but these individual decisions lead to emergent social structures over the whole populations. But does this emergent structure matter? Or to put it another way, if and how do the position of an individual in the emergent structure of their network affect their fitness? And what the evolutionary consequences of this? In this talk I will discuss work in several systems to start to explore some answers to these questions.

Nathalie Stroeymeyt (Ant epidemiology lab, University of Bristol)

Social insects as complex systems: collective behaviour and social organisation in insect societies

Social insects form highly interactive, cooperative societies in which complex collective patterns emerge from local interactions between individuals. In this talk, I will illustrate how complex systems approaches are key to understanding the functioning and biology of social insect colonies by showing (i) how individual movement rules underlie spatial division of labour within social insect nests, and (ii) how the resulting compartmentalization of social insect networks is used as an active strategy to decrease epidemic risk.

Programme

[September 3, 2024 - Local time]

09:30 - 11:00 Session I
- Nathalie Stroeymeyt (Ant epidemiology lab, University of Bristol)

Social insects as complex systems: collective behaviour and social organisation in insect societies

- Eduardo Colombo

Scaling-up interaction signal dynamics to understand population-level spatial organization

- Arshed Nabeel

Towards unifying principles of fish schooling dynamics

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00 Session II
Sam Ellis (Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, University of Exeter)

Friends, fitness and evolution in a complex world

- Sara Neven

Navigating Danger Together: How Coral Reef Fish Balance Information Sharing and Risk Response

Yasaman Asgari

Dynamics in Group Size and Fitness Consequences in a Population of Free-Ranging House Mice

Konrad Halupka

Self-organizing networks of unfriendly individuals

13:00 Lunch

Organisers

Josefine Bohr Brask

Behavioural Ecology Group, University of Copenhagen

Iacopo Iacopini

Network Science Institute, Northeastern University London

Matthew J. Silk

Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh

Location and general information

The satellite will take place at the same venue as the main Conference on Complex Systems (CCS), the campus of University of Exeter ---a few minutes away from the main train station.

More info on how to reach the venue can be found here.

For other information, such as VISA requirements, please check the dedicated webpage of the main conference.

Call for Abstracts

We encourage the submission of abstracts to be considered for contributed talks in the form of 10/15 min presentations.

Participants can submit an abstract in PDF format using the EasyChair website (button below). Authors not already registered on EasyChair should sign up for an account.

Submissions should be at most 2 pages long (including any figure and references) and should include: title, author(s), and affiliation(s).

Submitted abstracts will be evaluated and selected according to adherence with the theme of the satellite, originality of the research, and scientific soundness.

The submission system will remain open until the end of June 24, 2024 (AoE).

Submit your abstract here!

Registration and Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: June 17, 2024

Early bird registration deadline: July 15, 2024

Satellite participants must be registered for the main conference. There is no separate registration for the satellite.

If you would like to give a talk at the satellite, you need to submit an abstract directly to the satellite (see below).

Take me to the registration page!