Collective behaviour in starling flocks: understanding patterns of animal group movement.
speaker: Irene Giardina ( Roma La Sapienza & ISC-CNR)abstract: Bird flocking is a striking example of collective behaviour in biological systems. Thousands of birds gather above the roosting site, forming sharp-bordered flocks which wheel and turn with impressive coherence and synchronization. Despite its ethological relevance, the mechanistic laws of flocking are still poorly understood, mainly because of the lack of data on large systems. By means of stereoscopic photography and using statistical mechanics, optimization theory and computer vision techniques, we have measured for the first time the three-dimensional positions of individual birds in flocks of up to few thousands elements. This allowed us to analyze global and structural properties of flocking events and to unveil some crucial features of the mutual interaction between the birds.
timetable:
Fri 6 Apr, 9:30 - 10:00, Aula Dini
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