Living in groups: spatial-moment dynamics with neighbour-biased movements

Rachelle N Binny; Richard Law; Michael Plank

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.108825

Living in groups: spatial-moment dynamics with neighbour-biased movements

Rachelle N Binny, Richard Law, Michael Plank

Biology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Herd formation in animal populations, for example to escape a predator or coordinate feeding, is a widespread phenomenon. Understanding which interactions between individual animals are important for generating such emergent self-organisation has been a key focus of ecological and mathematical research. Here we show the relationship between the algorithmic rules of herd-forming agents, and the mathematical structure of the corresponding spatial-moment dynamics. This entails scaling up from the rules of individual, herd generating behaviour to the macroscopic dynamics of herd structure. The model employs a mechanism for neighbour-dependent, directionally-biased movement to explore how individual interactions generate aggregation and repulsion in groups of animals. Our results show that a combination of mutually attractive and repulsive interactions with different spatial scales is sufficient to lead to the stable formation of groups with a characteristic size.

Original language	English
Article number	108825
Journal	Ecological Modelling
Volume	415
Early online date	12 Nov 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.108825
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 12 Nov 2019

Bibliographical note

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10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.108825

AAM_2019_binny_law_plank
© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy.
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Cite this

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title = "Living in groups: spatial-moment dynamics with neighbour-biased movements",

abstract = "Herd formation in animal populations, for example to escape a predator or coordinate feeding, is a widespread phenomenon. Understanding which interactions between individual animals are important for generating such emergent self-organisation has been a key focus of ecological and mathematical research. Here we show the relationship between the algorithmic rules of herd-forming agents, and the mathematical structure of the corresponding spatial-moment dynamics. This entails scaling up from the rules of individual, herd generating behaviour to the macroscopic dynamics of herd structure. The model employs a mechanism for neighbour-dependent, directionally-biased movement to explore how individual interactions generate aggregation and repulsion in groups of animals. Our results show that a combination of mutually attractive and repulsive interactions with different spatial scales is sufficient to lead to the stable formation of groups with a characteristic size.",

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AU - Law, Richard

AU - Plank, Michael

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AB - Herd formation in animal populations, for example to escape a predator or coordinate feeding, is a widespread phenomenon. Understanding which interactions between individual animals are important for generating such emergent self-organisation has been a key focus of ecological and mathematical research. Here we show the relationship between the algorithmic rules of herd-forming agents, and the mathematical structure of the corresponding spatial-moment dynamics. This entails scaling up from the rules of individual, herd generating behaviour to the macroscopic dynamics of herd structure. The model employs a mechanism for neighbour-dependent, directionally-biased movement to explore how individual interactions generate aggregation and repulsion in groups of animals. Our results show that a combination of mutually attractive and repulsive interactions with different spatial scales is sufficient to lead to the stable formation of groups with a characteristic size.

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