Synchronization and cooperation among elementary agents, leading to coordination over length scales much larger than the size of the individual agents, is at the root of important biological functions.
Multicellular organisms rely on the coordinated action of individual cells, but interesting instances of emergent cooperative behaviour are already observed in unicellular organisms.
We will discuss some recent results on emergent cooperative behaviour in unicellular ciliates, from spatio-temporal coordination of molecular motors in the flagellar beat, to cooperative feeding flows in spontaneously assembled groups of organisms counting many individuals.