Ontogeny of collective behaviour

Abstract

During their lifetime, superorganisms, like unitary organisms, undergo transformations that change the machinery of their collective behaviour. Here, we suggest that these transformations are largely understudied and propose that more systematic research into the ontogeny of collective behaviours is needed if we hope to better understand the link between proximate behavioural mechanisms and the development of collective adaptive functions. In particular, certain social insects engage in self-assemblage, forming dynamic and physically connected architectures with striking similarities to developing multicellular organisms, making them good model systems for ontogenetic studies of collective behaviour. However, exhaustive time series and three-dimensional data are required to thoroughly characterize the different life stages of the collective structures and the transitions between these stages. The well-established fields of embryology and developmental biology offer practical tools and theoretical frameworks that could speed up the acquisition of new knowledge about the formation, development, maturity and dissolution of social insect self-assemblages and, by extension, other superorganismal behaviours. We hope that this review will encourage an expansion of the ontogenetic perspective in the field of collective behaviour and, in particular, in self-assemblage research, which has far-reaching applications in robotics, computer science and regenerative medicine. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Collective behaviour through time’.

A multi-scale review of the dynamics of collective behaviour: from rapid responses to ontogeny and evolution

“…Other collective behaviours exist and broadening studies to include other behaviours and systems could provide fruitful opportunities for comparative studies and assessing the generalities of our findings. For example, the collective architectures of social insects can be critical to a colony's survival; in this issue, Muratore & Garnier [161] discuss how these structures can be studied using a developmental biology approach. Rathore et al [162] make the argument that lekking, royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb Phil.…”

Development of neural circuits for social motion perception in schooling fish

“…Studies of fish schools have demonstrated that collective movement emerges from local interaction rules amongst group members (5)(6)(7)(8)(9), including short-range avoidance, long-range attraction, and postural alignment (2,4,5). Less is known about how social interaction rules materialize over the course of development (10), and the implementation of these rules in the nervous system (11,12).…”