Anyone who has moved furniture together with friends will appreciate that cooperative
transport requires some non-trivial communication. Yet ants are adept at collectively moving …

Trail pheromones do more than simply guide social insect workers from point A to point B.
Recent research has revealed additional ways in which they help to regulate colony …

To cooperatively transport a large load, it is important that carriers conform in their efforts
and align their forces. A downside of behavioural conformism is that it may decrease the …

Collective behaviours, such as flocking in birds or decision making by bee colonies, are
some of the most intriguing behavioural phenomena in the animal kingdom. The study of …

The behavioral mechanisms that lead to cooperation in social insects are often unknown or
poorly understood. Cooperative transport, or the movement of an object by two or more …

Any organism faces sensory and cognitive limitations which may result in maladaptive
decisions. Such limitations are prominent in the context of groups where the relevant …

Many social insects use pheromone trails to recruit workers to resources. Pheromone trails
have some limitations, however. Two major limitations are that they evaporate over time …

Collective motion by animal groups is affected by internal interactions, external constraints,
and the influx of information. A quantitative understanding of how these different factors give …

Group cohesion and consensus have primarily been studied in the context of discrete
decisions, but some group tasks require making serial decisions that build on one another …

Mites are frequent ant symbionts, yet the exact nature of their interactions with their hosts is
poorly known. Generally, myrmecophilous mites show adaptations for dispersal through …