title: Individual versus collective cognition in social insects.
abstract: The concerted responses of eusocial insects to environmental stimuli are often referred to as collective cognition at the level of the colony. To achieve collective cognition, a group can draw on two different sources: individual cognition and the connectivity between individuals. Computation in neural networks, for example, is attributed more to sophisticated communication schemes than to the complexity of individual neurons. The case of social insects, however, can be expected to differ. This is because individual insects are cognitively capable units that are often able to process information that is directly relevant at the level of the colony. Furthermore, involved communication patterns seem difficult to implement in a group of insects as they lack a clear network structure. This review discusses links between the cognition of an individual insect and that of the colony. We provide examples for collective cognition whose sources span the full spectrum between amplification of individual insect cognition and emergent group-level processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel ofer.feinerman@weizmann.ac.il.
authors.forename: Ofer
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4145-0238
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Feinerman
authors.affiliation: Institut de Recherche en Informatique Fondamentale (IRIF), CNRS and University Paris Diderot, Paris 75013, France.
authors.forename: Amos
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Korman
mesh_terms: D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003071:Cognition; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Communication patterns; Emergence; Group-level processes; Insect colony