Collective animal behavior / David J. T. Sumpter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sumpter, David, 1973-

Series:

Public Square

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social behavior in animals.

Collective behavior.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (488 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Coming Together

Chapter 3. Information Transfer

Chapter 4. Making Decisions

Chapter 5. Moving Together

Chapter 6. Synchronization

Chapter 7. Structures

Chapter 8. Regulation

Chapter 9. Complicated Interactions

Chapter 10. The Evolution of Co-operation

Chapter 11. Conclusions

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612821165

9781400837106

1400837103

9781282821163

1282821164

9780691129631

0691129630

OCLC:

670430622