Behavior and Ethology Commons^™

Structure, Control, And Communication Of Collective Animal Behavior In Dynamic Environments, Ivan Ignacio Rodriguez-Pinto

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collective behavior in animal aggregations is highly complex and spans multiple spatial scales, across a wide range of environmental conditions. In socially active fish, aggregation into schools is a widespread adaptation that confers a variety of safety benefits. The emergent patterns exhibited by collectively behaving fish schools may be influenced by biotic (i.e. predation) or abiotic (i.e. habitat complexity, turbidity) factors in the local environment. Our knowledge of the ways and extent to which environment variability affects schooling behavior at the collective level is currently limited. In this dissertation, I investigated whether environmental factors influenced the collective behavior of fish …