Workshop MMVW02 — Collective Behaviour

Modelling collective group movement in animal ecology and cell biology has, over the years, followed two relatively parallel modelling paths. Most prevalent for the former are what one might define as discrete level models, whereby computational constructs are used to keep track of the spatio-temporal dynamics of each individual in a group. Problems in the latter, cell biology, have been tackled mostly by continuous models whereby the details of the individuals are neglected, in favour of a description of the entire population through, e.g. a density function. However, more recently hybrid agent-based/population models have gained increasing usage.

As the overall aim of the workshop is to create an overarching modelling framework with which to interpret common empirical features, the exchange of ideas and techniques from the different communities is an invaluable opportunity to move forward and at the same to delineate the boundaries of applicability of the different approaches in collective movement research.