This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Perception, Action, and Cognition Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, the Animal Behavior Program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems in the Directorate for Biology, and the Dynamical Systems Program in the Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation in the Directorate for Engineering.
The project explores the question of how the activities of individuals become integrated into a smoothly functioning society: What are the dominant mechanisms? How resilient are they? How do they depend on the properties of individual society members? To this end, investigators from engineering, biology, psychology and linguistics will work together to study bee colonies and groups of humans to understand how organization and coordination emerges from these multi-agent systems and the factors that influence their robustness and resilience to perturbations. The project relies on quantitative observations of the dynamic emergence of patterns of interaction and coordination using an unprecedented, 24/7 monitoring system of a beehive as well as in groups of humans under controlled conditions designed to distinguish between failed and successful coordination. The investigators will pursue a combined theoretical, experimental, and computational framework for characterizing the resultant parallel and asynchronous communication systems. The work depends crucially on the interdisciplinary framework and the direct involvement of content expertise from the disciplines represented by the investigators. For example, the human transportation network is designed to resemble the coordinated delivery of nectar through a beehive, but with options for varying the number of different materials transported, the size of arena, the flow rates of the materials, and so on.
The investigators are exploring whether a comprehensive computational framework can be discovered to understand, predict and prevent the collapse of very different types of communities (bees and human networks). The research results are expected to provide insight into how to manipulate the behavior of a complex system, for example to address societal challenges associated with the collapse of pollinating bee colonies or the destructive behavior that is often associated with phases of social transition in groups of humans.
