Social networks improve leaderless group navigation by facilitating long-distance communication

Copycat dynamics in leaderless animal group navigation

Background: Many animals are known to have improved navigational efficiency when moving together as a social group. One potential mechanism for social group navigation is known as the ‘many wrongs principle’, where information from many inaccurate compasses is pooled across the group. In order to understand how animal groups may use the many wrongs principle to navigate, it is important to cons...

Modelling group navigation: transitive social structures improve navigational performance

Collective navigation demands that group members reach consensus on which path to follow, a task that might become more challenging when the group's members have different social connections. Group decision-making mechanisms have been studied successfully in the past using individual-based modelling, although many of these studies have neglected the role of social connections between the group'...

Long-distance communication by specialized cellular projections

Reinforced communication and social navigation generate groups in model networks.

To investigate the role of information flow in group formation, we introduce a model of communication and social navigation. We let agents gather information in an idealized network society and demonstrate that heterogeneous groups can evolve without presuming that individuals have different interests. In our scenario, individuals' access to global information is constrained by local communicat...

How to Improve Group Homogeneity in Online Social Networks

The formation and evolution of interest groups in Online Social Networks is driven by both the users’ preferences and the choices of the groups’ administrators. In this context, the notion of homogeneity of a social group is crucial: it accounts for determining the mutual similarity among the members of a group and it’s often regarded as fundamental to determine the satisfaction of group member...