The geometry of decision-making in individuals and collectives
Abstract
Almost all animals must make decisions on the move. Here, employing an approach that integrates theory and high-throughput experiments (using state-of-the-art virtual reality), we reveal that there exist fundamental geometrical principles that result from the inherent interplay between movement and organisms’ internal representation of space. Specifically, we find that animals spontaneously reduce the world into a series of sequential binary decisions, a response that facilitates effective decision-making and is robust both to the number of options available and to context, such as whether options are static (e.g., refuges) or mobile (e.g., other animals). We present evidence that these same principles, hitherto overlooked, apply across scales of biological organization, from individual to collective decision-making.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Dec 08, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.2102157118
Entities
People
- Bianca R. Schell
- Dan Gorbonos
- Iain Couzin
- Liang Li
- Máté Nagy
- Nir S. Gov
- Timothy Sorochkin
- Vivek H. Sridhar
Organizations
- Baden-Württemberg Stiftung
- Eötvös Loránd University
- German Research Foundation
- Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
- Max Planck Society
- Minerva Stiftung
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- University of Konstanz
- University of Waterloo
- Weizmann Institute of Science