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A major highlight in this regard was our autumn retreat at Schloss Marbach, which gave us an atmosphere worthy of a cluster of excellence (and with quite enjoyable meals for a start). Most importantly, it brought all of us together in person for the first time after a dire period of video conferences and working from home due to COVID-19. It felt like taking a deep breath, like taking a break from all the crises that have been and still are a heavy burden for this planet and its inhabitants, without denying or downplaying their existence. We have been working on the past, present, and future of the cluster, across and within levels of experience and disciplines, with the goal of identifying unifying major research questions and mechanisms of collective behaviour, across species and systems. Researchers have inspired us with talks about robot swarms, the ecology of bonobos, the commonalities between paragliders and Andean condors when moving through the air, as well as how birds might consider an integrated concept of beauty in mate choice.

As was also directly visible at the retreat, our community is a fascinating crowd: it currently consists of about 150 people, including principal investigators, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral candidates, affiliate members, as well as a never-tiring office team that always backs us, keeps us going, and helps us to radiate our insights to the outside world. Importantly, we have added another core competency to the cluster office with two research data managers. Given that the data we collect are growing rapidly both in terms of quantity as well as complexity, as are the reporting standards in terms of transparency and security, outstanding support is extremely useful for our community. Please make use of it!

Our community is not only growing in size but also in its research activity. In sum, there have already been more than 300 publications that have resulted from our endeavours. In 2022 as well, these were included in major outlets such as Science, Science Advances, and Nature Communications. Besides publishing their exciting work, members of our community have been extremely successful in acquiring prestigious awards and grants, such as a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, one ERC Consolidator Grant and one ERC Starting Grant, and a Freigeist Fellowship from the Volkswagen Foundation. Furthermore, we are pleased to announce that we can present our first “fully homegrown” doctoral researchers, who have graduated at the Centre of the Advanced Study for Collective Behaviour. Finally, the Imaging Hangar – one of the competitive advantages of our cluster – is up and running and will soon house exciting experiments with ants, locusts, other intriguing species, and robots.

With extreme sadness, we would like to acknowledge here that 2022 has also been the year in which we have mourned our esteemed colleague and friend Professor Marcus Groettrup, who passed away after a serious illness on 2 June 2022, just a few weeks after his 58th birthday. His pioneering immunological research made valuable contributions to the understanding of immune responses to therapeutic approaches to fighting disease, e.g. for developing an immunotherapy to treat cancer. In the cluster, Marcus played a leading role in the study of the transmission of stress in a range of species, one of our major research foci. He will be dearly missed by all of us, both professionally and personally, and we would like to offer our sincerest condolences to his family.

We wish you happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year!

Yours cordially,

Iain, Oliver, and Wolfgang