Collective Movement and Collective Information Acquisition With Signaling

Mohammad Salahshour,Shahin Rouhani

doi:10.3389/fphy.2021.668283

Abstract

We consider a population of mobile agents able to make noisy observations of the environment and communicate their observation by production and comprehension of signals. Individuals try to align their movement direction with their neighbors. Besides, they try to collectively find and travel towards an environmental direction. We show that, when the fraction of informed individuals is small, by increasing the noise in communication, similarly to the Vicsek model, the model shows a discontinuous order-disorder transition with strong finite-size effects. In contrast, for a large fraction of informed individuals, it is possible to go from the ordered phase to the disordered phase without passing any phase transition. The ordered phase is composed of two phases separated by a discontinuous transition. Informed collective motion, in which the population collectively infers the correct environmental direction, occurs for a high fraction of informed individuals. When the fraction of informed individuals is low, the misinformed collective motion, where the population fails to find the environmental direction, becomes stable as well. Besides, we show that an amount of noise in the production of signals is more detrimental for the inference capability of the population and increases temporal fluctuations, the density fluctuations, and the probability of group fragmentation, compared to the same amount of noise in the comprehension.

Highlights

Many species, from bacteria [1,2,3] and cells [4, 5] to insects [6, 7], large animals [8,9,10,11] and humans [12] show collective motion, an intriguing phenomena in which individuals in a population move in ordered groups, presumably due to local interactions [13]
In many cases, collectively moving populations try to find and travel to a preferred goal, such as a nutrient source or a migration root [8, 12, 16, 24]. They may do so, while only a fraction of individuals have information about the preferred root and try to lead the group [8, 12, 16, 24]. These considerations raise the important question that how collective motion in a population of Collective Movement and Information Acquisition individuals who exchange their social information by production and comprehension of signals is formed, and how the noise inherent in the communication system affects the collective information acquisition capability of the moving population?
We have introduced a model of collective movement in which individuals in a population try to collectively find and travel in a preferred direction

Summary

Introduction

From bacteria [1,2,3] and cells [4, 5] to insects [6, 7], large animals [8,9,10,11] and humans [12] show collective motion, an intriguing phenomena in which individuals in a population move in ordered groups, presumably due to local interactions [13]. These considerations raise the important question that how collective motion in a population of Collective Movement and Information Acquisition individuals who exchange their social information by production and comprehension of signals is formed, and how the noise inherent in the communication system affects the collective information acquisition capability of the moving population?

Methods

Results

Conclusion