Collective exploration of complex environments

(ongoing)

As a side project during my PhD, I conducted experiments with golden shiners (Notemigonus crysoleucas) to investigate how groups of fish explore unknown complex environments.

Image showing individual trajectories, obtained using TRex, a multi-animal tracking system with markerless identification and 2D estimation of posture and visual fields, developed by Tristan Walker (recently published in eLife).

Image showing individual trajectories, obtained using TRex, a multi-animal tracking system with markerless identification and 2D estimation of posture and visual fields, developed by Tristan Walker (recently published in eLife).

Questions for future work include:

  • Can these group exploration dynamics be modeled using a multi-agent form of Novelty Search?

  • What is the role of (informational) free-riders in these fission/fusion dynamics?

  • Do consistent strategies of exploration and exploitation of information emerge within groups? (e.g., A consistent following strategy could allow some individuals to devote closer attention to the environment, which might lead to discovering novel routes (and thus suddenly departing from the group).