The evolution of animal grouping and collective motion

Wide range of organisms, from bacteria to fish to birds, exhibit remarkable patterns of collective motion. Much of the work on swarming systems, based on self-propelled particle models of statistical physics, have focussed on how local interactions between individuals can produce spectacular spatiotemporal patterns. From an evolutionary perspective, individuals are typically in conflict with one another as they optimize their own relative-fitness. Therefore, a fundamental question in biology is to understand how the process of natural selection that favors selfish individuals shapes local interactions that in turn result in complex coordinated collective motion. I will present our recent theoretical and experimental work on the evolution of grouping and collective animal motion in the context of migration and predation.