Dr. Peleg will deliver the first Mind in Vitro seminar of the Fall 2026 semester on August 28 at 4:15pm in 4100 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building.
Abstract: Firefly flashes are a striking natural system for studying how animals communicate using light. Their brief bioluminescent signals are often species-specific and play a central role in courtship and mate recognition. We study how these discrete visual signals are coordinated across individuals. A major focus of our work is synchronization, in which many males adjust their flash timing relative to one another to generate large-scale rhythmic displays. To understand how such collective patterns emerge, we combine field recordings, behavioral experiments, mathematical models, and robotics. Recently, we ran playback experiments presenting controlled light stimuli to fireflies. We found that stimuli near an individual’s flash can advance or delay subsequent timing, producing excitation- and inhibition-like regimes. As an outlook, I will sketch how physiological constraints on light sensing may define the feasible space of flash codes, shaping both synchronization and recognition.
Biography: Orit Peleg is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Peleg leads an interdisciplinary lab studying how organisms communicate, coordinate, and form collective patterns. Her group combines methods from physics and computer science with behavioral field experiments to study living systems such as firefly swarms and honeybee clusters. A central goal of her work is to understand how information moves through biological groups, from flashes of light in fireflies to mechanical and chemical signals in honeybee colonies. Her honors include a Schmidt Science Polymath Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, and National Geographic Explorer recognition.