Energetic benefits of social information use for movement decisions in soaring flight.

Animal movement is essential for survival, allowing individuals to find food, mates, and avoid predators. Soaring birds depend on updrafts of air to reduce energy costs, but these resources are patchy and unpredictable. We use an Agent-Based Model to examine how social information influences movement efficiency in collective soaring flight by reducing uncertainty about resource availability. Our model simulates agents navigating a dynamic energy landscape through glide-soar movement. We assess how social reliance and risk-taking behavior interact with environmental predictability to shape movement performance in terms of energetic costs. In the talk, I will present our model, show some results, and share a few cool condor pictures from our field trip in Argentina.

Eleonora Gatti is a PhD student at the University of Konstanz in the Move.in.Formation group, studying optimal movement in soaring flight. After studying Physics at the University of Milan, she completed her master's thesis in the Department of Collective Behavior, where she worked on models of collective decision making.