group behaviour

Most organisms are social at some point in their life, and there are many proposed advantages for collecting together in groups, such as enhanced predator detection, sharing of social information, and an increased ability to find and collect food.

Lots of science being done internationally is currently focussed on how the dynamic behaviour of groups comes from how the group members are able to follow rules within the group and respond to information that is available to them – researchers are finding that seemingly complex group behaviours can come through individuals following simple rules about what is happening in their immediate proximity, and that there doesn’t necessarily need to be individuals coordinating how the group works. We are interested in picking apart the rules that individuals are following.

This ongoing work uses a variety of theoretical and experimental techniques to explore how both the behaviour and physical attributes of other group members and the needs of the individual influence its behaviour. We are using the rules derived from game theoretic work to explore how herding animals behave in the field.

relevant literature

Evans MHR, Lihou KL & Rands SA (2018). Black-headed gulls synchronise their activity with their nearest neighbours. Scientific Reports 8: 9978 | full text

Giles SL, Nicol CJ, Harris PA & Rands SA (2015). Dominance rank is associated with body condition in outdoor-living domestic horses (Equus caballus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 166: 71-79 | full text (open access) | pdf

McDonald ND, Rands SA, Hill F, Elder C & Ioannou CC (2016). Consensus and experience trump leadership, suppressing individual personality during social foraging. Science Advances 2: e1600892 | full text (open access) | pdf

Pearce RF, Giuggioli L & Rands SA (2017). Bumblebees can discriminate between scent-marks deposited by conspecifics. Scientific Reports 7: 43872 | full text (open access) | pdf | New Scientist coverage

Rands SA (2010). Self-improvement for team-players: the effects of individual effort on aggregated group information. PLoS One 5: e11705 | full text | pdf

Rands SA (2010). Group-movement ‘initiation’ and state-dependent decision-making. Behavioural Processes 84: 668-670 | details | pdf (postprint version)

Rands SA (2011). The effects of dominance on leadership and energetic gain: a dynamic game between pairs of social foragers. PLoS Computational Biology 7: e1002252 | full text | pdf

Rands SA (2011). Approximating optimal behavioural strategies down to rules-of-thumb: energy reserve changes in pairs of social foragers. PLoS One 6: e22104 | full text | pdf

Rands SA (2012). Using physical and computer simulations of collective behaviour as an introduction to modelling concepts for applied biologists. Bioscience Education 19: article 4 | abstract | article | pdf | zipped netlogo files | supplementary material

Rands SA (2015). Nearest neighbour clusters as a novel technique for assessing group associations. Royal Society Open Science 2: 140232 | full text (open access) | pdf

Rands SA, Cowlishaw G, Pettifor RA, Rowcliffe JM & Johnstone RA (2003). The spontaneous emergence of leaders and followers in foraging pairs. Nature 423: 432-434 | abstract

Rands SA, Cowlishaw G, Pettifor RA, Rowcliffe JM & Johnstone RA (2008). The emergence of leaders and followers in foraging pairs when the qualities of individuals differ. BMC Evolutionary Biology 8: article 51 | abstract | pdf | full text

Rands SA & Ioannou CC (2023). Personality variation is eroded by simple social behaviours in collective foragers. PLoS Computational Biology 19: e1010908 | full text (open access) | Netlogo code | dataset

Rands SA & Johnstone RA (2006). Statistical measures for defining an individual’s degree of independence within state-dependent dynamic games. BMC Evolutionary Biology 6: article 81 | abstract | pdf | full text

Rands SA, Muir H & Terry N (2014). Red deer synchronise their activity with close neighbours. PeerJ 2: e344 | full text | pdf

Rands SA, Pettifor RA, Rowcliffe JM & Cowlishaw G (2004). State-dependent foraging rules for social animals in selfish herds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 271: 2613-2620 | abstract | pdf

Rands SA, Pettifor RA, Rowcliffe JM & Cowlishaw G (2006). Social foraging and dominance relationships: the effects of socially mediated interference. Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology 60: 572-581 | abstract| pdf | full text

Rowe ZW, Robins JH & Rands SA (2023). Red deer Cervus elaphus blink more in larger groups. Ecology and Evolution 13: e9908 | full text (open access) | dataset