Moving animal groups provide some of the most intriguing and difficult to characterise examples of collective behaviour. We review some recent (and not so recent) empirical research on the motion of animal groups, including fish, locusts and homing pigeons. An important concept which unifies our understanding of these groups is that of transfer of directional information. Individuals which change their direction of travel in response to the direction taken by their near neighbours can quickly transfer information about the presence of a predatory threat or food source. We show that such information transfer is optimised when the density of individuals in a group is close to that at which a phase transition occurs between random and ordered motion. Similarly, we show that even relatively small differences in information possessed by group members can lead to strong collective-level decisions for one of two options. By combining the use of self-propelled particle and social force models of collective motion with thinking about the evolution of flocking we aim to better understand how complexity arises within these groups.

中文翻译：

---

移动动物群中的信息传递。

移动的动物群体提供了一些最有趣和难以描述集体行为的例子。我们回顾了一些最近（而不是最近）关于动物群体运动的实证研究，包括鱼、蝗虫和信鸽。统一我们对这些群体的理解的一个重要概念是定向信息的传递。响应其近邻所采取的方向而改变其行进方向的个体可以快速传送有关掠食性威胁或食物来源存在的信息。我们表明，当群体中的个体密度接近随机和有序运动之间发生相变时的密度时，这种信息传递得到了优化。相似地，我们表明，即使群体成员所拥有的信息存在相对较小的差异，也可以导致对两种选择之一做出强有力的集体决策。通过将自推进粒子和集体运动的社会力模型的使用与对群集进化的思考相结合，我们旨在更好地了解这些群体中的复杂性是如何产生的。