ArticleRoyal Society open science2022
Emergence of splits and collective turns in pigeon flocks under predation.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distant Landmarks Used for Navigation by Homing Pigeons.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A mechanistic understanding of collective escape in starling flocks.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Emergence of Longitudinal Queues in Group Navigation: An Interpretable Approach via Projective Simulation.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Experimental emergence of conventions in human dyads.PloS one · 2026Article
- Changing Flight and Flocking Dynamics of Homing Pigeons (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Better and faster decisions by larger fish shoals in the wild.Science advances · 2025Article
- Information structure of heterogeneous criticality in a fish school.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Collective anti-predator escape manoeuvres through optimal attack and avoidance strategies.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Collective responses of flocking sheep (Ovis aries) to a herding dog (border collie).Communications biology · 2024Article
- Body orientation change of neighbors leads to scale-free correlation in collective motion.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Perception of motion salience shapes the emergence of collective motions.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A robotic falcon induces similar collective escape responses in different bird species.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- SMART-BARN: Scalable multimodal arena for real-time tracking behavior of animals in large numbers.Science advances · 2023Article
- Dynamics of collective motion across time and species.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Inferring social influence in animal groups across multiple timescales.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- A multi-scale review of the dynamics of collective behaviour: from rapid responses to ontogeny and evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Multispecies collective waving behaviour in fish.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Characterization of bird formations using fuzzy modelling.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Starling-Behavior-Inspired Flocking Control of Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm in Complex Environments with Dynamic Obstacles.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Complex patterns of collective behaviour may emerge through self-organization, from local interactions among individuals in a group. To understand what behavioural rules underlie these patterns, computational models are often necessary. These rules have not yet been systematically studied for bird flocks under predation. Here, we study airborne flocks of homing pigeons attacked by a robotic falcon, combining empirical data with a species-specific computational model of collective escape. By analysing GPS trajectories of flocking individuals, we identify two new patterns of collective escape: early splits and collective turns, occurring even at large distances from the predator. To examine their formation, we extend an agent-based model of pigeons with a 'discrete' escape manoeuvre by a single initiator, namely a sudden turn interrupting the continuous coordinated motion of the group. Both splits and collective turns emerge from this rule. Their relative frequency depends on the angular velocity and position of the initiator in the flock: sharp turns by individuals at the periphery lead to more splits than collective turns. We confirm this association in the empirical data. Our study highlights the importance of discrete and uncoordinated manoeuvres in the collective escape of bird flocks and advocates the systematic study of their patterns across species.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.