Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move

Iain D. Couzin (), Jens Krause, Nigel R. Franks and Simon A. Levin
Additional contact information
Iain D. Couzin: Princeton University
Jens Krause: University of Leeds
Nigel R. Franks: University of Bristol
Simon A. Levin: Princeton University

Nature, 2005, vol. 433, issue 7025, 513-516

Abstract: Leadership by numbers Moving groups of animals, including fish, ungulates, birds and honeybee swarms seem able to take complex decisions in the absence of signalling mechanisms, and when group members cannot establish who has or has not got information. A numerical simulation shows how such groups can make accurate consensus decisions, and that the larger the group, the smaller the proportion of informed individuals needed to guide the group. A very small proportion of informed individuals is sufficient for near maximal accuracy. This has implications for our understanding of the evolution of information transfer in groups, and also suggests a new design protocol for the guidance of grouping robots. Cover photo, by Phillip Colla Natural History Photography ( http://www.OceanLight.com ), shows schooling jack mackerel.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (78)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03236 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:433:y:2005:i:7025:d:10.1038_nature03236

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature03236

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().