Environmental memory boosts group formation of clueless individuals

Area of Science:

• Collective behavior
• Self-organization
• Decentralized systems

Background:

• Group formation enhances performance and fitness in diverse systems.
• Coordination often emerges from simple rules and limited individual information processing.
• Explicit signaling is typically assumed for coordination.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate group formation in systems lacking individual information processing and communication.
• To identify environmental mechanisms for coordinating collective behavior.
• To explore indirect coordination through environmental memory.

Main Methods:

• Simulating a community of individuals with no information processing capabilities.
• Introducing a dynamic environment capable of transiently storing memory.
• Analyzing emergent group formation patterns.

Main Results:

• A dynamic environment can coordinate group formation without individual communication.
• Environmental memory of past individuals facilitates indirect coordination.
• Dynamic environmental factors reinforce group formation, reducing reliance on signaling.

Conclusions:

• A novel mechanism for indirect coordination via environmental memory is identified.
• Dynamic environments can drive self-organization and collective decision-making.
• This pathway is relevant for both biological and artificial active matter.