Stephen Pratt

Invited talks

Decentralized mechanisms of collective behavior in social insects. Department of Biology Seminar, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, December 7, 2016.

Collective cognition by insect societies. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Seminar, University of Colorado, Boulder, November 4, 2016.

Collective cognition by insect societies. Department of Entomology Colloquium, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, October 24, 2016.

Collective cognition by insect societies. USDA Arid –Land Agricultural Research Center, Maricopa, Arizona, October 5, 2015.

Mechanisms of collective behavior by insect societies. Ant Course, Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Arizona, August 14, 2015.

Collective cognition by insect societies. Mathematical Institute, University of Uppsala, Sweden, May 6, 2015.

Collective cognition by insect societies. School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia, March 20, 2015.

Psychology of a superorganism: Collective decision-making by ant colonies. Department of Biology, Northern Arizona University, April 12, 2012.

Psychology of a superorganism: Collective decision-making by ant colonies. Strategic Studies Group, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, November 14, 2011.

Psychology of a superorganism: Collective decision-making by ant colonies. Department of Economics, Boston University, March 31, 2011.

Collective decision-making in ants: The interplay of group and individual cognition. Groningen Lectures in Theoretical Biology, University of Groningen, Netherlands, January 13, 2010.

The role of quorum sensing in the collective decisions of insect societies. Center for Insect Science Fall Hexapodium, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, December 7, 2007.

Collective decision-making by ant colonies: Linking group and individual behavior. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 16, 2007.

From individual behavior to collective cognition in decision-making by ants. University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, October 18, 2006.

A tunable algorithm for collective decision-making by ant colonies. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, August 22, 2005.

How ants choose a new nest: an algorithm for collective decision-making. University of Umeå, Sweden, April 13, 2005.

From individual behavior to collective cognition in decision-making by ants. University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, February 21, 2005.

From individual to collective behavior in nest site selection by ants. University of Oxford, United Kingdom, May 13, 2004.

Individual recruitment rules underlying collective choice of nest sites by ants. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 3, 2002.

Quorum sensing, recruitment, and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, February 21, 2002.

From individual behavior to collective decisions: how emigrating ant colonies choose a new nest site. University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, May 16, 2000.

Functional design of an insect society: how honey bee colonies control the timing and type of comb construction. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, February 9, 2000.

Optimal timing of comb construction by honey bee colonies: a dynamic programming model and experimental tests. University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, February 24, 1999.

Conference presentations

Pratt, S.C. Mechanisms of collective behavior by insect societies. 1st International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-inspired Robotics, Kyoto, Japan, October 30, 2015.

Pratt, S.C. Distributed information processing by insect societies. 2nd Workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms, Austin, Texas, October 11, 2014.

Pratt, S.C. and Pavlic, T.P. Sequential-sampling models of quorum detection in house-hunting ants. 17th International Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Cairns, Australia, July 13-18, 2014.

Pratt, S.C. Collective cognition by insect societies. Collective Intelligence Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 11, 2014.

Pratt, S.C. Distributed information processing by insect societies. 1st IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing, Austin, Texas, December 3, 2013.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making in ants. 60th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, Knoxville, Tennessee, November 11, 2012.

Pratt, S.C. Collective intelligence of insect societies: Understanding the algorithmic basis of behavior. 2012 meeting of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas, Santa Fe, New Mexico, September 20, 2012.

Pratt, S.C. Psychology of a superorganism: Collective decision-making by ant colonies. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Collective Decisions, Paris School of Economics, Paris, France, July 1, 2012.

Pratt, S.C., Berman, S., Kumar, V., Lindsey, Q., and Sakar M.S. Collective transport by ants as a model for robot teams (Poster). Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2011.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making in ants: The interplay of group and individual cognition. 16th International Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making in ants: The interplay of group and individual cognition. 47th annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2010.

Pratt, S.C. Ant colonies as distributed information processors. National Science Foundation Workshop on Distributed Processing over Cognitive Networks, Los Angeles, California, November 20, 2009.

Pratt, S.C. Decision-making by ants: Rational groups of irrational individuals? Third Workshop on Swarming in Natural and Engineering Systems, Block Island, Rhode Island, June 4, 2009.

Pratt, S.C. Discovering the algorithms that coordinate animal behavior. Kickoff meeting for the Office of Naval Research HUNT project, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 18, 2008.

Pratt, S.C. The interaction of group and individual decision-making during nest-site selection by ants. Workshop on Systems Biology of Decision Making, Mathematical Biosciences Institute at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, June 20, 2008.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making by ant colonies: Linking group and individual behavior. Workshop on Modeling Complex Biological Systems, Center for Interdisciplinary Mathematics, University of Uppsala, Sweden, April 17, 2008.

Pratt, S.C. Quorum responses and consensus decision-making. Group as Individual in Social Dynamics, 1st International Conference of the ASU Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, Tempe, Arizona, 2008.

Pratt, S.C. The role of quorum sensing in the collective decisions of insect societies. 55th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, San Diego, California, 2007.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making by ant colonies: Linking group and individual behavior. Robotics Science and Systems Conference: Workshop on Algorithmic Equivalences Between Biological and Robotic Swarms, Atlanta, Georgia, June 30, 2007.

Pratt, S.C. Rationality in collective and individual decision-making by ants. Second Workshop on Swarming in Natural and Engineered Systems, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 16, 2007.

Pratt, S.C. Irrationality in collective decision-making by ants. 15th International Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Washington, D.C., 2006.

Pratt, S.C. A tunable algorithm for collective decision-making by ant colonies. Workshop on Swarming in Natural and Engineered Systems, Napa, California, August 3, 2005.

Pratt, S.C. A tradeoff between speed and accuracy of collective nest site choice by ants. Annual Meeting of the North American Section of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Camp Tontozona, Arizona, 2004.

Pratt, S.C. Detection of a nestmate quorum via encounter rates in the ant Leptothorax albipennis. 2nd International Workshop on the Mathematics and Algorithms of Social Insects, Atlanta, Georgia, 2003.

Pratt, S.C. Detection of a nestmate quorum via encounter rates in the ant Leptothorax albipennis. 51st Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2003.

Pratt, S.C. Individual recruitment rules underlying collective choice of nest sites by ants. Fondation des Treilles Workshop on Self-organization and Collective Decision-Making by Animal Societies, Tourtours, France, August 30, 2002.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making in ants. Symposium on Multilevel Selection at the 39th annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, Bloomington, Indiana, July 16, 2002.

Pratt, S.C., Mallon, E.B., Sumpter, D.J.T., and Franks, N.R. Quorum-sensing and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. 14th International Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Sapporo, Japan, 2002.

Pratt, S.C. Quorum-sensing and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. 9th Biennial Congress of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology, Montreal, Canada, 2002.

Pratt, S.C., Mallon, E.B., Sumpter, D.J.T., and Franks, N.R. From individual to collective behavior in nest site selection by the ant Leptothorax albipennis.  Workshop on the Mathematics of Social Insects, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, 2001.

Pratt, S.C., Mallon, E.B., Sumpter, D.J.T., and Franks, N.R. From individual to collective behavior in nest site selection by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. 38th annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, Corvallis, Washington, 2001.

Pratt, S.C., Mallon, E.B., Sumpter, D.J.T., and Franks, N.R. Information flow and collective decision-making during nest site selection by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. 2001 conference of the Society for the Study of Evolution, Knoxville, Tennessee, 2001.

Pratt, S.C. Collective decision-making in a small society: how the ant Leptothorax albipennis chooses a nest site. Ants’2000: 2nd International Workshop on Ant Algorithms, Brussels, Belgium, 2000.

Pratt, S.C. Decentralized control of drone comb construction in honey bee colonies. 13th Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Adelaide, Australia, 1998.

Pratt, S.C. Optimal timing of comb construction by honey bee colonies. Winter meeting of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects–British Section, London, United Kingdom, 1998.

Pratt, S.C. Decentralized control of drone comb construction in honey bee colonies. International meeting on the mathematical biology of pattern and process, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom, 1998.

Pratt, S.C. Control of the timing of comb construction by honey bee colonies. 1997 meeting of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects–North American Section, Nederland, Colorado, 1997.

Pratt, S.C. Regulation of the timing of comb construction by honey bee colonies. 12th Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, Paris, France, 1994.

Campus and departmental talks

Collective cognition by insect societies. Symposium in honor of Robert E. Page, December 13, 2016.

Decentralized mechanisms of collective behavior in social insects. ASU Math Club, Tempe, Arizona, March 23, 2016.

The psychology of ants and ant colonies. BEYOND Center Workshop on Information, Complexity and Life, Tempe, Arizona, February 25, 2014.

Collective transport by ants as a model for robot teams. Conference on Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies and Human Design, Tempe Arizona, February 19, 2010.

Collective decision-making by ant colonies: Linking group and individual behavior. Applied Psychology Seminar, Cognitive Engineering Research Institute, Mesa, Arizona September 18, 2007.

Insect societies as collective decision-makers. Neuroscience of Social Decision Making Seminar, Princeton University, November 8, 2005.

Collective decision-making by ant colonies. Neuroscience Retreat, Princeton University, June 2, 2005.

Speed-accuracy tradeoffs in collective decision-making by ants. Maclean House postdoctoral seminar series, Princeton University, March 31, 2005.