Collective organization is everywhere, both around us and within us. Our
brains are composed of billions of interconnected cells communicating with
chemical and electrical signals. Our bodies are formed from clustering,
communicating cells, and we ourselves are integrated in our own collective
human society. Elsewhere in the natural world hundreds of thousands of blind
army ants coordinate a massive raid across the rainforest floor, a flock of
birds arcs and ripples while descending to roost and a fish school convulses,
as if one entity, when attacked by a predator. How can animal groups move in
unison? How does individual behaviour produce group dynamics? How do animal
societies make informed unanimous decisions? From ant swarms to traffic jams,
from consensus decision-making in animal groups to that among collections of
neurons, I will discuss how, and why, coordinated collective patterns are
generated in biological systems.