Making noise: Emergent stochasticity in collective motion
Authored by A Jamie Wood, Nikolai W F Bode, Daniel W Franks
Date Published: 2010
DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.08.034
Sponsors:
Advanced Institute on Vulnerability to Global Environmental Change
United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
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Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
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Abstract
Individual-based models of self-propelled particles (SPPs) are a popular
and promising approach to explain features of the collective motion of
animal aggregations. Many models that capture some features of group
motion have been suggested but a common framework has yet to emerge. Key
to all of these models is the inclusion of ``noise{''} or stochastic
errors in the individual behaviour of the SPPs. Here, we present a fully
stochastic SPP model in one dimension that demonstrates a new way of
introducing noise into SPP models whilst preserving emergent behaviours
of previous models such as coherent groups and spontaneous direction
switching. This purely individual-to-individual, local model is related
to previous models in the literature and can easily be extended to
higher dimensions. Its coarse-grained behaviour qualitatively reproduces
recently reported locust movement data. We suggest that our approach
offers an alternative to current reasoning about model construction and
has the potential to offer mechanistic explanations for emergent
properties of animal groups in nature. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights
reserved.
Tags
Evolution
behavior
Leadership
flocking
Animal groups
Phase-transition
Fish schools
Particles