Our work on collective behavior highlighted in Harper's

Posted March 2022 by Bryan Daniels

Steven Strogatz ... believes that the world's outstanding scientific mysteries, regardless of discipline, are all questions of collectives.

I was already thrilled to see a piece in Harper's on collective animal behavior, complete with gorgeous photos of synchronizing fireflies. I was even more excited to see our research mentioned, in the context of startle behavior spreading through fish schools (joint with Winnie Poel, Matt Sosna, Pawel Romanczuk, Iain Couzin, and others). But to see Steve Strogatz, one of my scientific heroes, paraphrased to highlight "collectives" as the scientific subject of our times — I was amazed.

It's not often that science journalism captures my imagination when covering science that I am so close to. Vanessa Gregory did a great job grounding our sometimes very abstract area of research in an understandable and compelling way without watering it down.

Check out the article here: harpers.org/archive/2022/03/bright-flight-fireflies-collective-behavior-blink/