Abstract

The collective behavior of organisms creates environmental micro-niches that buffer them from environmental fluctuations, thus coupling organismal physiology, environmental physics, and population ecology. This talk will focus on combining biological experiments, theory, and computation to understand how a collective of bees can integrate physical and behavioral cues to attain a non-equilibrium steady state that allows them to resist and respond to environmental fluctuations of forces and flows. This includes bee clusters that aggregate via chemical communication networks, change their morphology to withstand mechanical stresses, and regulate their bulk temperature. When combined with quantitative analysis and computations in both systems, we integrate the sensing of the environmental cues (mechanical forces,temperature, chemical concentrations) and convert them to behavioral outputs that allow the swarms to achieve dynamic homeostasis.