Science发表论文实证研究了生物种群的群体智慧

参阅：1 FEBRUARY 2013 VOL 339 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

Emergent Sensing of Complex Environments by Mobile Animal Groups

The capacity for groups to exhibit collective intelligence is an often-cited advantage of group
living. Previous studies have shown that social organisms frequently benefit from pooling imperfect
individual estimates. However, in principle, collective intelligence may also emerge from
interactions between individuals, rather than from the enhancement of personal estimates. Here,
we reveal that this emergent problem solving is the predominant mechanism by which a
mobile animal group responds to complex environmental gradients. Robust collective sensing
arises at the group level from individuals modulating their speed in response to local, scalar,
measurements of light and through social interaction with others. This distributed sensing requires
only rudimentary cognition and thus could be widespread across biological taxa, in addition to
being appropriate and cost-effective for robotic agents.