Organized flight in birds

Bajec, Iztok Lebar; Heppner, Frank

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.07.007

Cited by 249 publications

(188 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…For example, when social communication is dominated by sensing and sensing is restricted in range or direction, the group's spatial geometry can strongly influence information passing and thus group behavior. Many previous studies of mobile animal groups have attempted to explain observed behavior as resulting from average measures of group geometry such as average spacing and configuration (Spooner 1931;van Olst and Hunter 1970;Breder 1976;Partridge et al 1980;Dill et al 1997;Bajec and Heppner 2009). It has been shown from empirical data that such average measures of spatial distribution can remain steady even as individuals move continuously relative to one another [e.g., for juvenile blacksmith fish in Parrish and Turchin (1997)].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinated Speed Oscillations in Schooling Killifish Enrich Social Communication

2015

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We examine the spatial dynamics of individuals in small schools of banded killifish (Fundulus diaphanus) that exhibit rhythmic, oscillating speed, typically with sustained, coordinated, out-of-phase speed oscillations as they move around a shallow water tank. We show that the relative motion among the fish yields a periodically time-varying network of social interactions that enriches visually driven social communication. The oscillations lead to the regular making and breaking of occlusions, which we term "switching." We show that the rate of convergence to consensus (biologically, the capacity for individuals in groups to achieve effective coordinated motion) governed by the switching outperforms static alternatives, and performs as well as the less practical case of every fish sensing every other fish. We show further that the oscillations in speed yield oscillations in relative bearing between fish over a range that includes the angles previously predicted to be optimal for a fish to detect changes in heading and speed of its neighbors. To investigate systematically, we derive and analyze a dynamic model of interacting agents that move with oscillatory speed. We show that coordinated circular motion of the school leads to systematic cycling of spatial ordering of agents and possibilities for enriched spatial density of measurements of the external environment. Our results highlight the potential benefits of dynamic communication topologies in collective animal behavior, and suggest new, useful control laws for the distributed coordination of mobile robotic networks.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinated Speed Oscillations in Schooling Killifish Enrich Social Communication

2015

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“…Each individual in the group senses the movement of other sufficiently close group members, and adjusts its own flight behavior in order to avoid collision and to maintain group coherence. Many animal species, such as fish (Parrish and Hamner, 1997), birds (Lebar Bajec and Heppner, 2009) and bats (Betke et al, 2007;Dechmann et al, 2010;Richard et al, 1962), aggregate in groups. When an echolocating bat flies in the same air space as conspecifics, it must both coordinate its flight path with others and adapt its echolocation calls to minimize interference from calls produced by conspecifics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of competitive prey capture on flight behavior and sonar beam pattern in paired big brown bats,Eptesicus fuscus

Chiu

Reddy

Xian

et al. 2010

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Long-range correlation violates the principle of locality, making the lookout birds transmit information on either danger or resources with a time delay determined by the time distance between two consecutive collapses. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.078103 PACS numbers: 87.23.Cc, 64.60.fd, 89.70.Àa, 89.75.Hc In the recent few years, there has been intense activity to explain why a swarm of birds behaves as a single individual [1,2]. How is it possible that when a predator comes, the swarm changes direction to escape from danger?…”

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confidence: 99%

Criticality and Transmission of Information in a Swarm of Cooperative Units

2011

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We show that the intelligence of a swarm of cooperative units (birds) emerges at criticality, as an effect of the joint action of frequent organizational collapses and of spatial correlation as extended as the flock size. The organizational collapses make the birds become independent of one another, thereby allowing the flock to follow the direction of the lookout birds. Long-range correlation violates the principle of locality, making the lookout birds transmit information on either danger or resources with a time delay determined by the time distance between two consecutive collapses. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.078103 PACS numbers: 87.23.Cc, 64.60.fd, 89.70.Àa, 89.75.Hc In the recent few years, there has been intense activity to explain why a swarm of birds behaves as a single individual [1,2]. How is it possible that when a predator comes, the swarm changes direction to escape from danger? How is it possible that a subset of a swarm becoming aware of the right direction toward a resource [3] convinces the whole flock to pursue that specific course? In which sense, using a metaphor made popular by Couzin [4], can we interpret the swarm as a cognitive mind?The main purpose of this Letter is to prove that this form of intelligence is the effect of the joint action of frequent organizational collapses, allowing the single birds to recover independence of the others, and of a correlation length as extended as the flock size. Although the environment perceiving units are a small fraction of the total number of units, they exert a determinant action on the swarm during the short rearrangement phase after an organizational collapse, which makes each unit free to select a new direction. This freewill condition allows the swarm to select the new flying directions that are transmitted to all the units by the few danger-or resource-perceiving birds, thanks to the criticality-induced long-range correlation. The connection between dynamic instability and information transfer has been recently observed in locust nymphs [3]. The results of this Letter confirm the importance of this observation, establishing at the same time that the information transfer is made possible by the nonlocal nature of the criticality condition, with a time delay depending on the time distance between two consecutive organizational collapses. The correlation length between birds becomes as extended as the finite swarm size, thereby allowing the lookout birds to transmit their flying direction to the whole swarm. Thus, the mean value hi, proportional to the correlation length, remains finite.To afford a convincing proof that the swarm's intelligence is determined by the joint action of organizational collapses and criticality-induced nonlocality, we proceed in two main steps. In the first step we use a model of bird organization, referred to in this Letter as the bird model, to illustrate the concept of temporal complexity. The second step is based on a simpler model, where the relative positions of the birds are fixed and they have only to ch...

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Organized flight in birds

Cited by 249 publications

References 76 publications

Coordinated Speed Oscillations in Schooling Killifish Enrich Social Communication

Coordinated Speed Oscillations in Schooling Killifish Enrich Social Communication

Effects of competitive prey capture on flight behavior and sonar beam pattern in paired big brown bats,Eptesicus fuscus

Criticality and Transmission of Information in a Swarm of Cooperative Units

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