Who said PIs do not do their own experiments 😄 Back in @hhmijanelia.bsky.social hosted by Emily Dennis lab to collect some very cool foraging data . Stay tuned
Ahmed El Hady
@zamakany.bsky.social
Group leader at Center for advanced Study of Collective Behavior CEO and co-founder of Ecodylic Science Behavior, Biophysics, Quantification, Analytics
As more and more experimentalists are interested in social foraging , careful design of experiments guided by cognitive models is crucial. We looked at model selection and identifiability methods for socio-cognitive models here: biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New preprint Lisa Blum Moyse and myself delved into model selection and identifiability methods of social evidence accumulation models providing practical guidelines on how to design your next favorite collective foraging experiments, check it out: arxiv.org/abs/2609.36231 @cbehav.bsky.social
This edition was a success and we are currently preparing for the 2027 edition . Stay tuned
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · last mo.Last week I spent it with excellent students at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social Learnt about multitude of open research problems in theoretical biophysics from genomic regulation to protein folding to mechanisms of morphogenesis and much more . Bright future ahead.
Welcome to the Swarm, Matheus! We are looking forward to you. 💐
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · last mo.Welcome! PhD student Matheus Stefanini Mariano (bachelor/ masters in physics at Universidade de São Paulo). He is planning to investigate how behavioral patterns and objectives underlying them can be inferred from tracking data using ML/AI methods. More info: matheus-stefanini-mariano.github.io.
Welcome! PhD student Matheus Stefanini Mariano (bachelor/ masters in physics at Universidade de São Paulo). He is planning to investigate how behavioral patterns and objectives underlying them can be inferred from tracking data using ML/AI methods. More info: matheus-stefanini-mariano.github.io.
Last week I spent it with excellent students at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social Learnt about multitude of open research problems in theoretical biophysics from genomic regulation to protein folding to mechanisms of morphogenesis and much more . Bright future ahead.
Excited to be at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social next week for Theoretical Biophysics workshop co-organized with @allysonsgro.bsky.social. We have an amazing line up of early career scientists working on exciting problems from gene expression to animal behavior. Details: www.janelia.org/you-janelia/...
So happy to be back in Aspen at the Center for Physics . Excited to be part of the Workshop on collective function of active living matter.
If you are planning to go to Social Simulation Conference 2026 in Durham UK please check out the following poster by Lisa Blume Moyse. We began recently developing modeling frameworks explaining emergence of collective narratives on Twitter / X.
For this year Konstanz School of Collective Behavior, the students designed a shirt :D @cbehav.bsky.social
The best part of the Konstanz School of Collective Behavior is the student project presentations . This year: 14 students, 14 projects @cbehav.bsky.social
Check our new preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Resource depletion accelerates rate learning but not composition learning in patch foraging
Foraging is a universal animal behavior that has increasingly attracted the interest of both experimentalists and theorists. Most prior models assume an animal knows the distribution of resources in i...
biorxiv.org
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · 3mo agoForaging can seen as hierarchical statistical inference: Animal moves among patches, each with its own yield rate setting the rate at which it encounters resources then, Within a patch, the animal encounters resources and the posterior over the patch’s initial count sharpens from early to late.
This is one of the topics I am increasingly interested in , which is finding scenarios where one can do apple to apple comparison between model based and model free agents learning their foraging environment. Check out our new preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2607.29476
Resource depletion accelerates rate learning but not composition learning in patch foraging
Foraging is a universal animal behavior that has increasingly attracted the interest of both experimentalists and theorists. Most prior models assume an animal knows the distribution of resources in i...
arxiv.org
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · 3mo agoHow does the performance of different types of agents when it comes to learning the statistical structure of the environment ? Variable patches favor timing over counting, and a model pays until it is wrong
New Study! @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social Often foraging models assume that the forager knows the environment and proceed to predict decision strategies but how does the foraging learn the structure of the environment ? A new preprint delves into this question
The yearly tradition begins again . Welcoming all our amazing students to the Konstanz School of Collective Behavior 2026 . So happy it is happening again . All details here : www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/ @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de
So happy that our study on patch foraging in Drosophila larvae is out in @elife.bsky.social Check it out here: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Doing some physics with a view . Working on a paper in a good fresh mood overlooking this bright ocean ☺️❤️ also thumbs up @overleaf.com the best 🙌🏾 @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social
Think deeply about the dimensions of your foraging experiments and how to make your experiments a window into more integrative understanding of foraging. Love foraging :D More here: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Neurobiology of Foraging: An Integrative Approach
Foraging, defined as the search for food to sustain one's energetic needs, is a fundamental behavior performed by almost all animals to survive in their environment. Foraging involves a variety o...
annualreviews.org
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · 4mo ago
Think deeply about the dimensions of your foraging experiments and how to make your experiments a window into more integrative understanding of foraging. Love foraging :D More here: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Neurobiology of Foraging: An Integrative Approach
Foraging, defined as the search for food to sustain one's energetic needs, is a fundamental behavior performed by almost all animals to survive in their environment. Foraging involves a variety o...
annualreviews.org
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · 4mo agoIn my review on Integrative approach to foraging, we propose six axes on which experiments can be plotted, hoping to inspire experimenters to push further along one or more of these axes. Think about your experiments and plot it on those axes :D More here: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Ahmed El Hady @zamakany.bsky.social · 6mo agoAfter three years of working on this review with my collaborator Emily Dennis (Janelia Farm), it is finally in press. The review provides an overview and our personal reflections on what constitutes an integrative approach to neurobiology of foraging. Enjoy www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Check this exciting new foraging paper. Very excited that we are currently collaborating with @davidrobbe.bsky.social group to model behavioral mechanisms underlying foraging startegies in the The Tower Foraging Park.
David Robbe@davidrobbe.bsky.social · 4mo agoExcited to share our new paper: "The Tower Foraging Park: A paradigm for studying cognitive and motor processes underlying behavioral flexibility in freely moving mice,". Out now in @cp-iscience.bsky.social 🧵1/9 www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
Excited to share our new paper: "The Tower Foraging Park: A paradigm for studying cognitive and motor processes underlying behavioral flexibility in freely moving mice,". Out now in @cp-iscience.bsky.social 🧵1/9 www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
The Tower Foraging Park: A paradigm for studying cognitive and motor processes underlying behavioral flexibility in freely moving mice
Biological sciences; Behavioral neuroscience; Laboratory animal science
cell.com
If you have some free time, watch this great lecture at the @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social by Ilya Nemenman on learning without learning , using random networks with constraints to reproduce many of the basic results reported in many neuro experiments. Link here: online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/brain...
Ilya Nemenman, Emory, Learning Without Learning: or To Be (surprised) or Not To Be
online.kitp.ucsb.edu