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Received: JAccepted: DecemPublished: January 31, 2013Ĭopyright: © 2013 Young et al.
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University of Washington, United States of America In addition, the results and the versatility of the approach have implications for uncertainty management in social and technological networks.Ĭitation: Young GF, Scardovi L, Cavagna A, Giardina I, Leonard NE (2013) Starling Flock Networks Manage Uncertainty in Consensus at Low Cost. The implication that robustness of cohesion may have been a factor in the evolution of flocking has significant consequences for evolutionary biology. We apply this approach to experimental data from wild starling flocks, and find that six or seven neighbors yield maximal robustness. The approach allows the evaluation of robustness over a family of hypothesized sensing strategies using observations of the spatial positions of birds within the flock. To prove this result we develop a new systems-theoretic approach for understanding noisy consensus dynamics. Our paper explains the mystery: when uncertainty in sensing is present, interacting with six or seven neighbors optimizes the balance between group cohesiveness and individual effort. Previous work has shown that starlings pay attention to their seven closest neighbors, but until now it was not understood why this number is seven. Starling flocks move in beautiful ways that both captivate and intrigue the observer. More generally, our results elucidate the role of the interaction network on uncertainty management in collective behavior, and motivate the application of our approach to other biological networks. The results suggest that robustness to uncertainty may have been a factor in the evolution of flocking for starlings. We use this approach to further show that for the range of flocks studied the optimal number of neighbors does not depend on the number of birds within a flock rather, it depends on the shape, notably the thickness, of the flock. The metric quantifies the disagreement within the network due to disturbances and noise during consensus behavior and can be evaluated over a parameterized family of hypothesized sensing strategies (here the parameter is number of neighbors).
![starling flocks starling flocks](https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/an-enormous-flock-of-starlings-f.jpg)
We can distinguish these numbers of neighbors from fewer or greater numbers using our systems-theoretic approach to measuring robustness of interaction networks as a function of the network structure, i.e., who is sensing whom. We analyze robustness to uncertainty of consensus in empirical data from multiple starling flocks and show that the flock interaction networks with six or seven neighbors optimize the trade-off between group cohesion and individual effort. Recent work demonstrated that individual starlings within large flocks respond to a fixed number of nearest neighbors, but until now it was not understood why this number is seven.
![starling flocks starling flocks](https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.stage.cookspest.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Starlings_opt.jpg)
Flocks of starlings exhibit a remarkable ability to maintain cohesion as a group in highly uncertain environments and with limited, noisy information.