A study of collective states, multistability and transitional behavior in schooling fish published by researchers from Princeton University.
The patterns exhibited by moving animal groups like flocks of birds and schools of fish are typical of self-organizing systems in which global structural and dynamical properties arise from local interactions between individuals. Despite their apparent complexity, such systems can often be described, and understood, in terms of these emergent properties, rather than the detailed low-level description needed for depicting the individual dynamics. Schooling fish can be described in terms of the degree of alignment and degree of rotation among group members. The authors demonstrate that shiner schools exhibit three distinct behaviors: a swarm state with low speeds and little order; a strongly aligned state where the fish move with higher speeds; and a milling state, where each fish moves around the center of the group. Simulations have previously predicted this type of behavior. These results give insight into the regulation of group structure among animals, and also inform us generally about how global structures arise naturally from interactions among components of dynamical systems.
Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution License.
Cover image: Modified figure from original publication.
References
Tunstrøm K, Katz Y, Ioannou CC, Huepe C, Lutz MJ, et al. (2013) Collective States, Multistability and Transitional Behavior in Schooling Fish. PLoS Comput Biol 9(2): e1002915. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002915.
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