Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin (MPI-AB & the University of Konstanz), “Communication and coordination in animal societies”

Abstract:

Many social species use signals such as vocalizations to coordinate a range of group behaviors, from coming to consensus on where to move to banding together against threats. Despite their widespread importance, these behaviors remain challenging to study in the wild because doing so requires monitoring many individuals simultaneously. In this talk, I will give an overview of our work tracking the movements and vocalizations of entire social groups in the wild to tackle questions at the interface of communication and collective behavior. What roles does vocal signaling play in the coordination of collective movement? What drives groups to split up? And how do vocalizations mediate collective action against external threats? I will explore how we and our collaborators are addressing these questions in three species of social carnivore that coordinate across varying spatial scales – highly cohesive meerkat groups, moderately cohesive coati groups, and fission-fusion hyena clans.

This talk is part of David Mezey‘s course “Introduction to Modeling Collective Behavior, ” a seminar on collective behavior research, combined with multiple interactive elements.

Photo by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė on Unsplash.