Topic: collective intelligence

SAB 2026 investigates the mechanisms that let natural and artificial agents adapt and survive in uncertain environments. Researchers compare biological behavior with robot experiments, computer simulations and mathematical models to evaluate principles and architectures of adaptive behavior. The programme covers collective intelligence, learning and skill acquisition, artificial perception and manipulation, and physical and social constraints on behavior. A cross-kingdom intelligence symposium includes Paco Calvo, Jens Krause, Vera Meyer and Ute Schmid. The meeting runs 19–22 October 2026 in

Study collective intelligence and predator-prey interactions in the ocean, focusing on blue whales and krill or sperm whales and deep-sea prey. The Collective Ecology group’s Carl Zeiss Nexus project combines biologging, three-dimensional movement records, feeding behaviour and acoustic observations to understand how predators exploit dynamic prey fields. The fully funded four-year doctorate has a planned start in summer or autumn 2027 through IMPRS Quantitative Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution.

There are many mysteries in the universe. One of the most significant, often considered the final frontier in science, is understanding how our subjective experience, or consciousness, emerges from the collective action of neurons in biological systems. While substantial progress has been made over the past decades, a unified and widely accepted explanation of the neural mechanisms underpinning consciousness remains elusive. The field is rife with theories that frequently provide contradictory explanations of the phenomenon. To accelerate progress, we have adopted a new model of science: adver

Many organisms, including humans, face the dilemma between choosing an option with a well-known output (exploitation) and sampling from a lesser known alternative (exploration). There are two common strategies used in solving this dilemma. One strategy is to guide decisions based on an “information bonus”, by choosing the option that provides more information (directed exploration). A second strategy is to maintain a certain decision noise, thus with an increased sampling of other options “by chance” (random exploration). Previous work by Wilson et al. (2014) showed that humans use both of th