Following an indecisive leader
Developing a virtual reality system to investigate how animals resolve incomplete social compass cues
Incomplete information, with strong components of uncertainty and ambiguity, is common in nature. While psychophysical studies have established how this affects perception by individual animals, relatively little is known for social groups in which perceived information is then transferred between individuals.
We will investigate this process of transformation between physical information, biological information, and social information, and how information can be recovered at each stage. We will use polarization compass behaviour in insects as our model system for the resolution of incomplete information in social groups.
Building on established methods for manipulating the ambiguity and uncertainty in polarized stimuli, we will first determine the rules underlying the active and passive propagation of incomplete information through social groups and then leverage this knowledge to develop a virtual reality system, allowing these principles to be investigated in other species.
