The dichotomous role of anisotropic sensing in pattern generation and disruption

Abstract

In this work, we explore the effects of an anisotropic sensing range on the behavior of migrating particles. We use a lattice-gas cellular automaton (LGCA) with liquid-crystal and ferromagnetic velocity alignment, and a sensing range modeled by a von Mises distribution. By performing simulations and mathematical analysis, we study the evolution of the system and the different patterns formed in each case. We observe that, increasing the anisotropy of the sensing range can have different effects on the density patterns. When particles interact ferromagnetically, sensing anisotropy has a deleterious effect which destabilizes patterns observed with an isotropic sensing range; while patterns change from thick bands to small clusters when anisotropy is increased with liquid-crystal interactions. The results suggest that organisms which coordinate through visual information could either benefit from, or be hidered by a restricted vision field depending on the nature of their pairwise interactions.