Related papers: Collective targeted migrations: a balancing act in…
Many migratory animals regularly travel thousands of kilometers, exactly finding their destinations. It is assumed that migrants have both a compass sense to hold their course, and a map sense --- a kind of "biological" GPS --- to correct…
Theoretical models of populations and swarms typically start with the assumption that the motion of agents is governed by the local stimuli. However, an intelligent agent, with some understanding of the laws that govern its habitat, can…
Swarming is a conspicuous behavioural trait observed in bird flocks, fish shoals, insect swarms and mammal herds. It is thought to improve collective awareness and offer protection from predators. Many current models involve the hypothesis…
Aggregation is a common behavior by which groups of organisms arrange into cohesive groups. Whether suspended in the air (like honey bee clusters), built on the ground (such as army ant bridges), or immersed in water (such as sludge worm…
Previous work has suggested that disordered swarms of flying insects can be well modeled as self-gravitating systems, as long as the "gravitational" interaction is adaptive. Motivated by this work we compare the predictions of the classic,…
Natural flocks (aligned) and swarms (non-aligned) both exhibit features of near-criticality, challenging their treatment as two ends of the same phase transition. We present a model for the aggregation of active individuals, in which their…
Social insects are ecologically and evolutionarily most successful organisms on earth, which can achieve robust collective behaviors through local interactions among group members. Colony migration has been considered as a leading example…
We bound the time it takes for a group of birds to reach steady state in a standard flocking model. We prove that (i) within single exponential time fragmentation ceases and each bird settles on a fixed flying direction; (ii) the flocking…
Bird flocking is a striking example of collective animal behaviour. A vivid illustration of this phenomenon is provided by the aerial display of vast flocks of starlings gathering at dusk over the roost and swirling with extraordinary…
The cohesive collective motion (flocking, swarming) of autonomous agents is ubiquitously observed and exploited in both natural and man-made settings, thus, minimal models for its description are essential. In a model with continuous space…
In crowded environments, individuals must navigate around other occupants to reach their destinations. Understanding and controlling traffic flows in these spaces is relevant for coordinating robot swarms and designing infrastructure for…
Most of us must have been fascinated by the eye catching displays of collectively moving animals. Schools of fish can move in a rather orderly fashion and then change direction amazingly abruptly. There are a huge number of further examples…
Collective motion of bird flocks can be explained via the hypothesis of many wrongs, and/or, a structured leadership mechanism. In pigeons, previous studies have shown that there is a well-defined hierarchical structure and certain specific…
We study a nonhierarchical tritrophic system, whose predator-prey interactions are described by the rock-paper-scissors game rules. In our stochastic simulations, individuals may move strategically towards the direction with more…
In swarms of flying insects, the motions of individuals are largely uncoordinated with those of their neighbors, unlike the highly ordered motion of bird flocks. However, it has been observed that insects may transiently form pairs with…
The study of self-propelled particles is a fast-growing research topic where biologically inspired movement is increasingly becoming of much interest. A relevant example is the collective motion of social insects, whose variety and…
Fish, birds, insects and robots frequently swim or fly in groups. During their 3 dimensional collective motion, these agents do not stop, they avoid collisions by strong short-range repulsion, and achieve group cohesion by weak long-range…
Collective motion is abundant in nature, producing a vast amount of phenomena which have been studied in recent years, including the landing of flocks of birds. We investigate the collective decision making scenario where a flock of birds…
Aggregation-diffusion equations are foundational tools for modelling biological aggregations. Their principal use is to link the collective movement mechanisms of organisms to their emergent space use patterns in a concrete mathematical…
Recent empirical observations of three-dimensional bird flocks and human crowds have challenged the long-prevailing assumption that a metric interaction distance rules swarming behaviors. In some cases, individual agents are found to be…