This is a set of references from which I often ask my students to read; to get familiarised with the work on collective motion, beginning broadly and then narrowing to the type of problems we do in our lab. Note that this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list.

General papers, Review articles.

Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S., Foley, J. A., Folke, C., & Walker, B. (2001). Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature, 413(6856), 591-596. https://www.nature.com/articles/35098000

May, R. M. (1977). Thresholds and breakpoints in ecosystems with a multiplicity of stable states. Nature, 269(5628), 471-477. https://www.nature.com/articles/269471a0

Early warning signals of tipping points (time series theory)

Guttal, V., & Jayaprakash, C. (2008). Changing skewness: an early warning signal of regime shifts in ecosystems. Ecology letters, 11(5), 450-460.

Dakos V, Carpenter SR, Brock WA, Ellison AM, Guttal V, Ives AR, et al. (2012) Methods for Detecting Early Warnings of Critical Transitions in Time Series Illustrated Using Simulated Ecological Data. PLoS ONE 7(7): e41010. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0041010

Early warning signals of tipping points (spatial theory)

Guttal, V., & Jayaprakash, C. (2009). Spatial variance and spatial skewness: leading indicators of regime shifts in spatial ecological systems. Theoretical Ecology, 2(1), 3-12.

Early warning signals of tipping points (empirical support)