Overview

We’ll now start thinking more about how groups of cells/organisms can interact with each other in complex ways.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class you should be able to:

  • Explain the rules of the Boids system
  • Explain the algorithms that some social insects use

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

  • Write a swarm system in Empirical

Reading

You should read the following to achieve the basic learning objectives:

  • Section 6.1 (Flocks, herds and schools) of Biological Bits
  • Section 6.2 (Swarm intelligence) of Biological Bits

Checks

Answer the following questions on Moodle:

  • A useful exercise in thinking about a minimal system is to look at each of the rules and predict what would happen if that rule was removed (while keeping the rest in place). Choose one of the Boids rules and describe what would happen in a system without that rule (but with the rest still in place).
  • Choose one specific behavior or task observed in social insects (e.g., foraging, house-hunting, or trail-making) and outline the simple, local rules an individual insect follows to produce that collective group outcome, similar to the heap-building example.

Be sure to also download the lab starter so that you’re ready to go ahead of class. You should make sure you can compile and run the web version before class.