Date: Tuesday, November 14th, 7:30 PM EST
Location: In Person in MCZ 101, on Zoom at
https://harvard.zoom.us/j/95244632230?pwd=b0I1OXFzN2twK2dtQ25tdWZMdU1Sdz09#success
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Title: “Problem solving and flexible control in self-organized collectives”
Speaker: Helen McCreery (Tufts University)
Summary:
Across levels of organization—from subcellular processes to massive
animal migrations— groups accomplish tasks well beyond what individuals
can do. Among the most charismatic examples of this are the
accomplishments of ant colonies. Ant colonies perform impressive tasks
that are impossible for individual ants. In general, there are many
benefits to collective action— e.g. it is typically scalable and robust—
but there are also costs associated with collective systems, including
high “inertia”, which is thought to result in a loss of flexibility. For
example, the positive feedbacks that allow an ant colony to choose
among resources may be hard to counteract if the chosen resource
disappears. Yet for some tasks, ants rapidly respond to changing
conditions. She will discuss the mechanisms of ants’ collective action
in two tasks
that require
extreme flexibility: maze-like obstacle navigation during cooperative
transport, and self-assembly of living bridges in army ants.