Collective biological motion: connecting empirical and theoretical approaches

从细胞到人类，聚合形成了惊人的集体模式，显示出自组织的协调、凝聚力和集体智慧。由于这些聚合体固有的复杂性，推断出决定个体运动路径的潜在相互作用和影响对大多数群体来说仍然是一个挑战。然而，最近在图像采集方面的技术进步带来了新的数据集，这些数据集可以完全准确地跟踪大型集体的每个成员（甚至在细胞的规模上），因此我们准备回答一系列问题，包括形式如何与群体的功能相关，局部和全局信息如何协调，精确的相互作用如何控制个体运动，以及集体如何被其存在的生态所塑造。

From cells to humans, aggregates form striking collective patterns, displaying self-organized coordination, cohesion, and collective intelligence. Due to the inherent complexity in these aggregates, deducing the underlying interactions and effects that determine individual movement paths remains a challenge for most groups. However, recent technological advances in image acquisition have led to new datasets that can completely and accurately track each individual member of large collectives (even at the scale of cells), and so we are poised to answer a host of questions concerning how form relates to function of the group, how local and global information is reconciled, what precise interactions govern individual motion, and how the collective is shaped by the ecology in which it exists.