Events Detail

Speaker:
Daniel Sankey, Newcastle University, UK

Collective behaviour is ubiquitous in nature. Defined as local individual-level interactions that give rise to emergent patterns at the group level, collective behaviour spans multiple biological levels, including molecules, cells, organisms, and societies. Many collective behaviours confer benefits on their group members – i.e., they are cooperative – even in groups of low genetic relatedness. However, group-level benefits alone are often not sufficient to explain the evolution and maintenance of cooperative behaviours in well-mixed populations. Establishing such an understanding is the purview of social evolution, yet theoretical tools from social evolution have seldom been applied to the field of collective behaviour. Toward closing this research gap, I present a case study using multilevel selection theory to study the evolution of coordinated collective behaviour under the threat of predation. I derive analytical solutions for the stable evolution of coordinated collective behaviour. To test these theories empirically, I suggest we will be able to tease apart the levels of selection using biohybrid experimental systems, which integrate virtual prey with real-life predators. Altogether, I provide a worked through application of social evolution theory, demonstrating how these techniques can provide testable hypotheses toward unravelling how collective behaviours evolved.

Daniel Sankey 
I am postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University, UK, with experience in both collective behaviour and social evolution. Myresearch focuses on developing theoretical models that bridge the gap between evolutionary theory and empirical work in collective behaviour. My goal is to make theoretical work more accessible to empiricists. To that end, I’ve launched a YouTube channel where I break down my research papers using an interactive online whiteboard. You can view an example of our recent Nature Communications paper here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaR3LTjXqRU. In my talk, I will adopt the same online whiteboard approach to present my most recent and exciting work to date, which I believe will be of particular interest to the MPIAB community (see Abstract for details).