Collective Animal Motion in the Wild

Abstract. Collective motion such as schooling, flocking, and herding is one of the most fascinating displays of animal movement in the natural world and a canonical example of a complex system. This collective behaviour can increase animals' ability navigate accurately, make good decisions, evade predators and capture prey. A growing body of literature predicts that simple individual-level mechanisms lead to this effective group-level functioning. While these results are exciting and informative, much of this work is theoretical or lab-based. New technological developments are paving the way for these systems to be studied in situ, in the environments where the behaviours evolved. Video footage from unmanned aerial vehicles and very high resolution satellites, combined with automated video tracking are set to give unparalleled insight into the functioning of wild animal groups. Similarly, advances in GPS and PIT tags, making them smaller, lighter and cheaper, allow them to be deployed in parallel so that the social context behind movement decisions can be explored. This workshop will explore systems and technologies to study collective animal motion in the wild.