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Simulating Complexity of Animal Social Behaviour

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Simulating Social Complexity

Part of the book series: Understanding Complex Systems ((UCS))

Abstract

Complex social phenomena occur not only among humans, but also throughout the animal kingdom, from bacteria and amoebae to non-human primates. At a lower complexity they concern phenomena such as the formation of groups and their coordination (during travelling, foraging, and nest choice) and at a higher complexity they deal with individuals that develop individual differences that affect the social structure of a group (such as its dominance hierarchy, dominance style, social relationships and task division). In this chapter, we survey models that give insight into the way in which such complex social phenomena may originate by self-organisation in groups of beetle larvae, in colonies of ants and bumblebees, in groups of fish, and groups of primates. We confine ourselves to simulations and models within the framework of complexity science. These models show that the interactions of an individual with others and with its environment lead to patterns at a group level that are emergent and are not coded in the individual (genetically or physiologically), such as the oblong shape of a fish school, variable shape in bird flocks, specific swarming pattern in ants, the centrality of dominants in primates, patterns of exchange and of ‘reconciliation’ and the task division among bumble bees. The hypotheses provided by these models appear to be more parsimonious than usual in the number of adaptive traits and the degree of cognitive sophistication involved. With regard to the usefulness of these simulations, we discuss for each model what kind of insight it provides, whether it is biologically relevant, and if so, whether it is specific to the species and environment and to what extent it delivers testable hypotheses.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andreas Flache and Rineke Verbrugge for comments on an earlier draft. I thank Daan Reid for correcting the English.

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  1. Centre for Life Sciences, Groningen Institute of Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, Groningen, 9747AG, The Netherlands

    Charlotte Hemelrijk

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  1. Charlotte Hemelrijk
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Correspondence to Charlotte Hemelrijk .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Business School, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Bruce Edmonds

  2. Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Business School, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Ruth Meyer

Further Reading

Further Reading

For further reading I recommend the book on self-organisation in biological systems by Camazine et al. (2001). This is an extensive introduction to almost all topics treated above and more (with the exception of task division and social systems of primates). Furthermore, new extensions of a number of the models are treated by Sumpter (2010). The above-mentioned book by Camazine and co-authors is also a good choice for teaching purposes, in addition to the well-written book by Resnick (1994). This latter book has been used in secondary schools and teaches to think in terms of complexity and self-organisation in general. For more advanced readers, I recommend “Self-organisation and Evolution of Social Systems” (Hemelrijk 2005). This is an edited book and contains recent articles on modelling of social systems, including those of humans.

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Hemelrijk, C. (2017). Simulating Complexity of Animal Social Behaviour. In: Edmonds, B., Meyer, R. (eds) Simulating Social Complexity. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66948-9_24

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