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Mathematical model of self-organizing hierarchies in animal societies

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Abstract

We propose a mathematical approach to the modelling of self-organizing hierarchies in animal societies. This approach relies on a basic positive feedback mechanism that reinforces the ability of a given individual to win or to lose in a hierarchical interaction, depending on how many times it won or lost in previous interactions. Motivated by experiments carried out on primitively eusocial waspsPolistes, the model, is based on coupled differential equations supplemented with a small stochastic term. Numerical integrations allow many different hierarchical profiles to be obtained depending on the model parameters: (1) the particular form of the probability for an individual to win or lose a fight given its history, (2) the probability of interaction between two individuals, (3) the forgetting strength, which determines the rate at which events in the past are forgotten and no longer influence the force of an individual and (4) two individual recognition parameters, which set the contribution of individual recognition in the process of hierarchical genesis. We compare the results, expressed in terms of a hierarchical index or of the Landau number that describes the degree of linearity of the hierarchy, with various experimental results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. France Telecom-CNET Lannion, B RIO/TNT, 22307, Lannion Cédex, France

    Eric Bonabeau

  2. CNRS-URA 664, Centre de Recherches en Biologie du Comportement, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062, Toulouse, France

    Guy Theraulaz

  3. Unit of Theoretical Behavioural Ecology, Service de Chimie-Physique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Boulevard du Triomphe, CP 231, 1050, Bruxelles, Belgique

    Jean-Louis Deneubourg

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Bonabeau, E., Theraulaz, G. & Deneubourg, JL. Mathematical model of self-organizing hierarchies in animal societies. Bltn Mathcal Biology 58, 661–717 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02459478

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