How can one measure group cohesion? From individual organisms to their interaction

TL;DR

This paper discusses methods to measure interactions within groups, highlighting experimental evidence of attraction among insects and analyzing the interaction properties of Euglena gracilis, aiming to better understand social and biological ties.

Contribution

It introduces experimental approaches to quantify social and biological interactions, focusing on insect populations and Euglena gracilis to advance understanding of group cohesion.

Findings

Evidence of inter-individual attraction in insect populations

Analysis of interaction properties in Euglena gracilis

Development of experimental measurement techniques

Abstract

Measuring atomic and molecular interactions was one of the main objectives of physics during the past century. It was an essential step not only in itself but because most macroscopic properties can be derived once one knows interaction strengths. At the present time, except for systems that can be described as discrete networks (like the Internet network) our knowledge of social and biological ties still remains very limited. An important step is to develop experimental means for measuring social and biological interactions. In this talk there are two parts. Firstly, we describe experimental evidence of inter-individual attraction in populations of insects. Secondly, we focus on a specific system, namely populations of Euglena gracilis, a green, swimming unicellular organism, for which we try to determine individual and interaction properties.