Dias, Cristóvão S;
Trivedi, Manish;
Volpe, Giovanni;
Araújo, Nuno AM;
Volpe, Giorgio;
(2023)
Environmental memory boosts group formation of clueless individuals.
Nature Communications
, 14
(1)
, Article 7324. 10.1038/s41467-023-43099-0.
Preview |
Text
s41467-023-43099-0.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The formation of groups of interacting individuals improves performance and fitness in many decentralised systems, from micro-organisms to social insects, from robotic swarms to artificial intelligence algorithms. Often, group formation and high-level coordination in these systems emerge from individuals with limited information-processing capabilities implementing low-level rules of communication to signal to each other. Here, we show that, even in a community of clueless individuals incapable of processing information and communicating, a dynamic environment can coordinate group formation by transiently storing memory of the earlier passage of individuals. Our results identify a new mechanism of indirect coordination via shared memory that is primarily promoted and reinforced by dynamic environmental factors, thus overshadowing the need for any form of explicit signalling between individuals. We expect this pathway to group formation to be relevant for understanding and controlling self-organisation and collective decision making in both living and artificial active matter in real-life environments.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Environmental memory boosts group formation of clueless individuals |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-023-43099-0 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43099-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Biophysics, Colloids, Condensed-matter physics, Self-assembly, Structure of solids and liquids |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Chemistry |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181527 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
