Constructing stability: optimal learning in noisy ecological niches.

Organisms can learn in response to environmental inputs as well as actively modify their environments through niche construction on slower evolutionary time scales. How quickly should an organism respond to a changing environment, and when possible, should organisms adjust the time scale of environmental change? We formulate these questions using a model of learning costs that considers optimal time scales of both memory and environment. We derive a general, sublinear scaling law for optimal memory as a function of environmental persistence.

Institutional dynamics and learning networks.

Institutions have been described as 'the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interactions.' This broad definition of institutions spans social norms, laws, companies, and even scientific theories. We describe a non-equilibrium, multi-scale learning framework supporting institutional quasi-stationarity, periodicity, and switching.

Collective Computation in Animal Fission-Fusion Dynamics.

Recent work suggests that collective computation of social structure can minimize uncertainty about the social and physical environment, facilitating adaptation. We explore these ideas by studying how fission-fusion social structure arises in spider monkey () groups, exploring whether monkeys use social knowledge to collectively compute subgroup size distributions adaptive for foraging in variable environments. We assess whether individual decisions to stay in or leave subgroups are conditioned on strategies based on the presence or absence of others.

Scaling theory of armed-conflict avalanches.

Armed conflict data display features consistent with scaling and universal dynamics in both social and physical properties like fatalities and geographic extent. We propose a randomly branching armed conflict model to relate the multiple properties to one another. The model incorporates a fractal lattice on which conflict spreads, uniform dynamics driving conflict growth, and regional virulence that modulates local conflict intensity.

The information theory of individuality.

Despite the near universal assumption of individuality in biology, there is little agreement about what individuals are and few rigorous quantitative methods for their identification. Here, we propose that individuals are aggregates that preserve a measure of temporal integrity, i.e.

Conflicts of interest improve collective computation of adaptive social structures.

In many biological systems, the functional behavior of a group is collectively computed by the system's individual components. An example is the brain's ability to make decisions via the activity of billions of neurons. A long-standing puzzle is how the components' decisions combine to produce beneficial group-level outputs, despite conflicts of interest and imperfect information.

Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanism.

Downward causation is the controversial idea that 'higher' levels of organization can causally influence behaviour at 'lower' levels of organization. Here I propose that we can gain traction on downward causation by being operational and examining how adaptive systems identify regularities in evolutionary or learning time and use these regularities to guide behaviour. I suggest that in many adaptive systems components collectively compute their macroscopic worlds through coarse-graining.

Collective memory in primate conflict implied by temporal scaling collapse.

In biological systems, prolonged conflict is costly, whereas contained conflict permits strategic innovation and refinement. Causes of variation in conflict size and duration are not well understood. We use a well-studied primate society model system to study how conflicts grow.

Dual Coding Theory Explains Biphasic Collective Computation in Neural Decision-Making.

A central question in cognitive neuroscience is how unitary, coherent decisions at the whole organism level can arise from the distributed behavior of a large population of neurons with only partially overlapping information. We address this issue by studying neural spiking behavior recorded from a multielectrode array with 169 channels during a visual motion direction discrimination task. It is well known that in this task there are two distinct phases in neural spiking behavior.

Control of finite critical behaviour in a small-scale social system.

Many adaptive systems sit near a tipping or critical point. For systems near a critical point small changes to component behaviour can induce large-scale changes in aggregate structure and function. Criticality can be adaptive when the environment is changing, but entails reduced robustness through sensitivity.

Quantifying collectivity.

In biological function emerges from the interactions of components with only partially aligned interests. An example is the brain-a large aggregation of neurons capable of producing unitary, coherent output. A theory for how such aggregations produce coherent output remains elusive.

Animal communication: hidden complexity.

A hallmark of human communication is vocal turn taking. Until recently, turn taking was thought to be unique to humans but new data indicate that marmosets, a new world monkey, take turns when vocalizing too.

A family of algorithms for computing consensus about node state from network data.

Biological and social networks are composed of heterogeneous nodes that contribute differentially to network structure and function. A number of algorithms have been developed to measure this variation. These algorithms have proven useful for applications that require assigning scores to individual nodes-from ranking websites to determining critical species in ecosystems-yet the mechanistic basis for why they produce good rankings remains poorly understood.

Sparse code of conflict in a primate society.

Animals living in groups collectively produce social structure. In this context individuals make strategic decisions about when to cooperate and compete. This requires that individuals can perceive patterns in collective dynamics, but how this pattern extraction occurs is unclear.

Multiple time-scales and the developmental dynamics of social systems.

To build a theory of social complexity, we need to understand how aggregate social properties arise from individual interaction rules. Here, I review a body of work on the developmental dynamics of pigtailed macaque social organization and conflict management that provides insight into the mechanistic causes of multi-scale social systems. In this model system coarse-grained, statistical representations of collective dynamics are more predictive of the future state of the system than the constantly in-flux behavioural patterns at the individual level.

Challenges for complexity measures: A perspective from social dynamics and collective social computation.

We review an empirically grounded approach to studying the emergence of collective properties from individual interactions in social dynamics. When individual decision-making rules, strategies, can be extracted from the time-series data, these can be used to construct adaptive social circuits. Social circuits provide a compact description of collective effects by mapping rules at the individual level to statistical properties of aggregates.

The immuno-dynamics of conflict intervention in social systems.

We present statistical evidence and dynamical models for the management of conflict and a division of labor (task specialization) in a primate society. Two broad intervention strategy classes are observed--a dyadic strategy--pacifying interventions, and a triadic strategy--policing interventions. These strategies, their respective degrees of specialization, and their consequences for conflict dynamics can be captured through empirically-grounded mathematical models inspired by immuno-dynamics.

A novel objective structured clinical examination for the assessment of transfusion practice in anaesthesia.

Background: In 2008 there were 262 episodes of incorrect blood component transfusion. Safer Practice Notice 14, Right patient, right blood, introduced a mandatory requirement for all clinical staff involved in the blood transfusion process to be assessed against competencies developed on a national basis. It was recommended that the assessment should be an observed, formalised process.

Evidence of strategic periodicities in collective conflict dynamics.

We analyse the timescales of conflict decision-making in a primate society. We present evidence for multiple, periodic timescales associated with social decision-making and behavioural patterns. We demonstrate the existence of periodicities that are not directly coupled to environmental cycles or known ultraridian mechanisms.

The challenges and scope of theoretical biology.

Scientific theories seek to provide simple explanations for significant empirical regularities based on fundamental physical and mechanistic constraints. Biological theories have rarely reached a level of generality and predictive power comparable to physical theories. This discrepancy is explained through a combination of frozen accidents, environmental heterogeneity, and widespread non-linearities observed in adaptive processes.

Inductive game theory and the dynamics of animal conflict.

Conflict destabilizes social interactions and impedes cooperation at multiple scales of biological organization. Of fundamental interest are the causes of turbulent periods of conflict. We analyze conflict dynamics in an monkey society model system.

Robustness and complexity co-constructed in multimodal signalling networks.

In animal communication, signals are frequently emitted using different channels (e.g. frequencies in a vocalization) and different modalities (e.

Context modulates signal meaning in primate communication.

A central issue in the evolution of social complexity and the evolution of communication concerns the capacity to communicate about increasingly abstract objects and concepts. Many animals can communicate about immediate behavior, but to date, none have been reported to communicate about behavior during future interactions. In this study, we show that a special, unidirectional, cost-free dominance-related signal used by monkeys (pigtailed macaques: Macaca nemestrina) means submission (immediate behavior) or subordination (pattern of behavior) depending on the context of usage.