2025/07/15 by Ivan Shpurov, Tom Froese, Shpurov, Ivan +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases (nlin.CG) #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models #Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.11592
openalex publication_date 2025/07/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The collective behavior of numerous animal species, including insects, exhibits scale-free behavior indicative of the critical (second-order) phase transition. Previous research uncovered such phenomena in the behavior of honeybees, most notably the long-range correlations in space and time. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the bee activity in the hive manifests the hallmarks of the jamming process. We follow up by presenting a discrete model of the system that faithfully replicates some of the key features found in the data - such as the divergence of correlation length and scale-free distribution of jammed clusters. The dependence of the correlation length on the control parameter - density is demonstrated for both the real data and the model. We conclude with a brief discussion on the contribution of the insights provided by the model to our understanding of the insects' collective behavior.