Abstract
Swarming is a phenomenon where collective motion arises from simple local interactions between typically identical individuals. Here, we investigate the effects of variability in behavior among the agents in finite swarms with both alignment and cohesive interactions. We show that swarming is abolished above a critical fraction of non-aligners who do not participate in alignment. In certain regimes, however, swarms above the critical threshold can dynamically reorganize and sort out excess non-aligners to maintain the average fraction close to the critical value. This persists even in swarms with a distribution of alignment interactions, suggesting a simple, robust and efficient mechanism that allows heterogeneously mixed populations to naturally regulate their composition and remain in a collective swarming state or even differentiate among behavioral phenotypes. We show that, for evolving swarms, this self-organized sorting behavior can couple to the evolutionary dynamics leading to new evolutionarily stable equilibrium populations set by the physical swarm parameters.
Highlights
Swarming is a phenomenon where collective motion arises from simple local interactions between typically identical individuals
Swarms above the critical threshold can dynamically reorganize and sort out excess non-aligners to maintain the average fraction close to the critical value. This persists even in swarms with a distribution of alignment interactions, suggesting a simple, robust and efficient mechanism that allows heterogeneously mixed populations to naturally regulate their composition and remain in a collective swarming state or even differentiate among behavioral phenotypes. For evolving swarms, this self-organized sorting behavior can couple to the evolutionary dynamics leading to new evolutionarily stable equilibrium populations set by the physical swarm parameters
As the non-aligner fraction f increases, we found that the average magnitude of the alignment interaction, α 〈|dA|〉 decreases as the non-aligners do not contribute to alignment and that the transition occurs at a value of f ∼f*when α 〈|dA|〉, becomes less than 〈|dLJ |〉
Summary
Swarming is a phenomenon where collective motion arises from simple local interactions between typically identical individuals. Swarms above the critical threshold can dynamically reorganize and sort out excess non-aligners to maintain the average fraction close to the critical value This persists even in swarms with a distribution of alignment interactions, suggesting a simple, robust and efficient mechanism that allows heterogeneously mixed populations to naturally regulate their composition and remain in a collective swarming state or even differentiate among behavioral phenotypes. Collective motion in natural systems is a well studied phenomena that spans many spatial and temporal time scales[1,2], ranging from protein filaments driven by molecular motors[3,4], to swarming bacteria[5] and active colloidal crystals[6], to fish[7], birds[8], and even robot swarms[9,10] Such collective phenomena rely on the sharing or transmission of local information by constituents of the group leading to global consensus.
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