2020/05/27 by Dan Gorbonos, James G. Puckett, Gorbonos, Dan +9 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO) #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Diffusion and Search Dynamics #FOS: Physical sciences #Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior #Micro and Nano Robotics #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2005.13237
openalex publication_date 2020/05/27 · openalex created_date 2020/06/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In swarms of flying insects, the motions of individuals are largely\nuncoordinated with those of their neighbors, unlike the highly ordered motion\nof bird flocks. However, it has been observed that insects may transiently form\npairs with synchronized relative motion while moving through the swarm. The\norigin of this phenomenon remains an open question. In particular, it is not\nknown if pairing is a new behavioral process or whether it is a natural\nbyproduct of typical swarming behavior. Here, using an "adaptive-gravity" model\nthat proposes that insects interact via long-range gravity-like acoustic\nattractions that are modulated by the total background sound (via "adaptivity"\nor fold-change detection) and that reproduces measured features of real swarms,\nwe show that pair formation can indeed occur without the introduction of\nadditional behavioral rules. In the model, pairs form robustly whenever two\ninsects happen to move together from the center of the swarm (where the\nbackground sound is high) toward the swarm periphery (where the background\nsound is low). Due to adaptivity, the attraction between the pair increases as\nthe background sound decreases, thereby forming a bound state since their\nrelative kinetic energy is smaller than their pair-potential energy. When the\npair moves into regions of high background sound, however, the process is\nreversed and the pair may break up. Our results suggest that pairing should\nappear generally in biological systems with long-range attraction and adaptive\nsensing, such as during chemotaxis-driven cellular swarming.\n