Objective Many organisms, including humans, group together and perform collective actions such as birds forming coordinated flocks to evade predators, forage or roost. Some, as social insects, have evolved complex societies in which the unit of selection is not the individual, as in most vertebrates, but the colony. Yet, in both there is evidence of consistent behavioural variability among both individuals and groups. The study of collective behaviour - coordinated actions resulting in emergent properties at the group level - and the study of animal personality - between individual differences that are consistent over time and contexts - have progressed tremendously in the last two decades and are converging in their search for the link between individuality and collectivity, a fundamental and timely issue in biology. The GROUPIND project aims to investigate the relationship between individual personality and group personality by using ants and starlings as study organisms, both of which showing distinct collective behaviour and marked individual behavioural variability. The project will use a comparative approach to address the following objectives: (1) To characterize, also upon experimental manipulation, the composition of personalities in the group and understand how this relates to personality at the group level. Are group personalities an average of individual personalities within the group? Do they result from different distributions of individual personalities? Are there keystone individuals that exert a disproportionate influence on the group personality? (2) To understand how diversity of individual personalities contributes to decision making and to the ecological success at the group level, and how this would feed back at the individual level. By bridging two major fields of study, this project will shed new light on the ability of groups to function effectively, unravelling the consequences that personality differences can exert on social life and its evolution. Fields of science natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyagricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagricultureindustrial cropsfoddernatural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological behavioural sciencesethologynatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geography Keywords Animal personality collective behaviour birds ants Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2014-EF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF) Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2014 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF) Coordinator UNIVERSITE PARIS 13 Net EU contribution € 185 076,00 Address Avenue jean-baptiste clement 99 93430 Villetaneuse France See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Seine-Saint-Denis Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
