Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez
Research Institute on Applied Mathematics and Systems at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Currently thinking about collective behavior and cognition. orcid.org/0000-0001-7175-3905
- A pleasure to chat with Matt Galloway in The Current, earlier this morniing, about our recently published paper on spider monkeys' collective intelligence www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...
- 🐒🧠 New paper in npj Complexity: complementary information sharing in fission-fusion dynamics. Video explainer: youtu.be/PIAhcLWqsO8?... Full paper (open access): doi.org/10.1038/s442... Higher-order spatial networks enable distributed foraging knowledge in heterogeneous environments. 👇
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezI'm really happy to share this paper showing a relationship between social integration and offspring survival in female spider monkeys. I was lucky to work on this with Cristina Jasso, @grf.bsky.social and a great group of collaborators. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Spider monkeys use collective intelligence to find food: www.earth.com/news/spider-...
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezImpressive research and impressive spider monkeys! #primates #cognition #information #network #sharing #fissionfusion theguardian.com/science/2026/jan/25…
- Spider monkeys crowdsource best places to eat in forest www.hw.ac.uk/news/2026/sp...
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-Fernandeznpj Complex.: Uncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging using higher-order spatial networks nature.com/articles/s44260-025…
- 🐒🧠 New paper in npj Complexity: complementary information sharing in fission-fusion dynamics. Video explainer: youtu.be/PIAhcLWqsO8?... Full paper (open access): doi.org/10.1038/s442... Higher-order spatial networks enable distributed foraging knowledge in heterogeneous environments. 👇
- Spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) exhibit high fission-fusion dynamics - individuals form subgroups that join and split frequently. We asked whether distributed spatial knowledge across individuals enabled collective processing of foraging information beyond individual capacity.
- We estimated individual core ranges (60% utilization distributions) from 6 years of location data in Yucatan, Mexico. We assumed that these core ranges represent an individual's spatial knowledge for a given season, while partial overlaps create opportunities for information transfer.
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View full threadFission-fusion dynamics implies distributed information processing analogous to that occurring in "liquid brains." Collective intelligence through complementary knowledge sharing! 🧠✨ Collaborators:Ross S. Walker, @mattjsilk.bsky.social, Denis Boyer and @sandrateles-esmag.bsky.social
- Thrilled to see this paper out, two years after starting our collaboration at @divintelligence.bsky.social
- Always uniquely funny and inspiring. Here at one of the first conferences I attended as a grad student, the Animal Social Complexity and Intelligence conference in Chicago, in 2000. Thank you Jane Goodall.
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezNew paper in @behavecol.bsky.social (link: academic.oup.com/beheco/advan...) led by PhD student @marcofele.bsky.social using hard-won data from our amazing baboon team. Our @swanseauni.bsky.social press release: www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office... We introduce the idea of a "social spandrel".....
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezUncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging using higher-order spatial networks arxiv.org/abs/2505.01167
- 🧪New preprint: “Uncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging using higher-order spatial networks” in collaboration with Ross Walker, @mattjsilk.bsky.social, Denis Boyer and @sandrateles-esmag.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2505.01167 🧵 1/5
- 2/5 Groups can often process information together more effectively than any single member could alone. In species with fission-fusion dynamics—where animals frequently split up and reunite (like dolphins or chimpanzees)—sharing different bits of knowledge about food locations helps the whole group…
- 3/5 track changes in their environment better than any individual could on its own. We studied how much individual animals' core ranges overlap, treating these overlaps as a way to measure shared vs. unique knowledge of food sources. Some range combinations strike a balance: they have enough overlap
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View full thread5/5 combined knowledge has complementarity: each individual fills in parts of the puzzle that others miss. We argue that the ever-changing structure of these groups helps them collectively adapt and make the most of their shared knowledge in unpredictable environments. 🐒 🧩 🐒 = 🧠
- Preprint: The causal role of synergy in collective problem solving. Great collaboration with DISI fellows @ketikagarg.bsky.social @culturologies.co, Zara Anwarzai and Hannah Dromiack
- With colleagues from our social complexity seminar, we joined the debate in BBS on "What is a society" by M. Moffett. We argue that a society can emerge from social interaction patterns without the need for establishing an a priori limit on who actually belongs to it doi.org/10.1017/S014...
- “Everything is political, especially the things that people tell you are not political. Those are the most political of all”
- "Yesterday I wrote a piece for the Guardian about my decision to step down as an Associate Editor at the Royal Society’s journal Open Science. The response has been overwhelming." My latest substack. open.substack.com/pu...
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezGood stuff here from @bylines.scot “Take control of your own news feed. Create your own media stream instead of relying on social media algorithms. Subscribe directly to trusted news sites or newsletters and set aside time for intentional reading” bylines.scot/society/a-ci...
- This summer school is a life- and mind-changing experience for any early career researcher, student or postdoc, as well as a wonderful experience for artists and storytellers. I could not recommend it more highly
- Review of applications starts March 1st! Apply here: disi.org/apply/
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezNo, Elon Musk didn't put a chip in anyone's brain, and we should not be terrified theneuroscienceofeve... A rapid-response post to a current article which suggests that Musk's brain-control abilities are waaaay beyond what they actually are Like/subscribe etc. #Musk #Brians #Neuralink #Science
- Meanwhile… www.euractiv.com/section/agri...
- So cute
- Stromatolites xkcd.com/3046
- Don’t leave the agency to the robots gracewlindsay.com/2025/01/24/2... ht @melaniemitchell.bsky.social
- Great essay by @neurograce.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/neur...
- I wrote about the concept of agency (both human and artificial) in the year 2025. gracewlindsay.com/2025/01/24/2...
- Trump threatens a global trade war. Europe must unleash a radical alternative | Gabriel Zucman www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
- Insightful essay on the value of theoretical papers for empirical research elifesciences.org/articles/60703
- “for me as a biologist, theory is valuable because it enables us to ask which of our results are likely to be general and which depend on the particular characteristics of our experimental system.”
- “We can also use theory to ask the following question: how might a biological system solve a particular problem?”
- “it can be easy to mistake the complexity of the mathematics in a theory paper for the importance of the new biological insight that ensues.”
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezSell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge. Rumi, Sufi scholar and poet (1207–1273)
- What adds to the strangness is that the captain "didn't see it coming" despite the name of his ship...
- This gets more 'stranger than fiction' by the day www.thetimes.com/article/4461...
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezNice piece from Andy Clark about generative AI
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-Fernandezthis is a bloody great name for a climate report www.unep.org/resources/em...
- A wonderful, historically and archaeologically informed, reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, in 1518. By Thomas Kole. tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl
- It was our pleasure having you here!
- Thank you IIMAS_UNAM and C3UNAM and @grf.bsky.social for hosting me this week in Mexico City. A great week talking about complex systems, urban areas, mobility and resilience.
- Very happy to host @estebanmoro.bsky.social at UNAM. He'll be giving a talk at IIMAS' coloquium and participating in an urban mobility and social network discussion at C3-UNAM. More information: www.iimas.unam.mx/event/market... c3.unam.mx/conferencias...
- We show that collective learning about the best foraging sites is enhanced by agents foraging widely (using Lévy movement strategies) and exchanging some information about the best sites with other agents. Collaboration with Andrea Falcón, Max Aldana and Denis Boyer. dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezThis 2019 Science Advances paper lives rent-free in my head, and I think it's the social science paper that I mention the most in everyday conversation with my peers or elders... #youths #olds #science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- "The thrill of making music is [...] when something happens that you hadn’t expected — some moment of synergy when you put together two or three familiar things and something emerges that is much bigger, more complex and surprising." www-ft-com.proxy-ub.rug.nl/content/1fe8...
- Very interesting review paper on visual perception of others' social interactions. That so much information processing is done by the visual system could also suggest that we adjust our own social interactions in the same perceptual, embodied way, without so much abstraction than normally thought.
- In our new paper out today at Trends in Cognitive Science, @lisik.bsky.social and I argue that social interaction perception is a visual process–computed by the visual system. (1/3) tinyurl.com/nhh2dhx #PsychSciSky #CogSci #CogPsyc #compneuro
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezNew paper!! "By casting the female brain as the central selective agent, Inferred Attractiveness captures novel & dynamic aspects of sexual selection & reconciles inconsistencies between mate choice theory and observed behavior" doi.org/10.1371/jour... @emilyhduval.bsky.social @servedio.bsky.social
- Current mood youtu.be/tYm1gR7zprg?...
- Beautiful summary video of multilevel social dynamics of Przewalski's horses youtu.be/H2BhFjEbZDE?... From the original study by Ozogány et al. published in Nature Communications, 2023
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezSimilarly, here there is a feed about complex systems: 👉 bsky.app/profile/did:... It lists posts with #ComplexSystems or #Complexity or #ComplexityScience or just the words “complex systems“ or “complexity science“ CC: @pessoabrain.bsky.social @scarpino.bsky.social @lmrocha.bsky.social
- The BlueSky way to keep track of posts, papers and discussions about #NetworkScience? Subscribe to its feed! To be listed in the feed it's enough to use #NetSci or the term “complex network” in your post. CC: @allard.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/did:...
- Reposted by Gabriel Ramos-FernandezThe BlueSky way to keep track of posts, papers and discussions about #NetworkScience? Subscribe to its feed! To be listed in the feed it's enough to use #NetSci or the term “complex network” in your post. CC: @allard.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/did:...
