Research proposal: Integrating computational science with biology to study collective animal behavior

This is a three-page research proposal that we wrote for funding requests. In this document, we propose an integration of our digital swarm evolution platform with a biological system to study the evolution of simulated prey behavior in response to predation. Particularly, we are looking to establish whether the predator confusion effect exists, and whether it can select for swarming behavior in groups of evolving prey that initially move randomly.