Abstract
In contrast to animal groups such as bird flocks or migratory herds that display net, directed motion, insect swarms do not possess global order. Without such order, it is difficult to define and characterize the transition to collective behavior in swarms; nevertheless, visual observation of swarms strongly suggests that swarming insects do behave collectively. It has recently been suggested that correlation rather than order is the hallmark of emergent collective behavior. Here, we report measurements of spatial velocity correlation functions in laboratory mating swarms of the non-biting midge Chironomus riparius. Although we find some correlation at short distances, our swarms are in general only weakly correlated, in contrast to what has been observed in field studies. Our results hint at the potentially important role of environmental conditions on collective behavior, and suggest that general indicators of the collective nature of swarming are still needed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
I.D. Couzin, Trends Cogn. Sci. 13, 36 (2009)
A. Okubo, Adv. Biophys. 22, 1 (1986)
J.K. Parrish, L. Edelstein-Keshet, Science 284, 99 (1999)
T. Vicsek, A. Zafeiris, Phys. Rep. 517, 71 (2012)
T. Vicsek, A. Czirók, E. Ben-Jacob, I. Cohen, O. Shochet, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 1226 (1995)
I.D. Couzin, J. Krause, R. James, G.D. Ruxton, N.R. Franks, J. Theor. Biol. 218, 1 (2002)
T.D. Seeley, Biol. Bull. 202, 314 (2002)
N.J. Mlot, C.A. Tovey, D.L. Hu, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 108, 7669 (2011)
A. Attanasi, et al., PLoS Comput. Biol. 10, e1003697 (2014)
A. Attanasi, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 238102 (2014)
A. Berdahl, C.J. Torney, C.C. Ioannou, J.J. Faria, I.D. Couzin, Science 339, 574 (2013)
P. Ramdya, et al., Nature 519, 233 (2015)
P.D. Armitage, P.S. Cranston, L.C.V. Pinder (eds.) The Chironomidae: Biology and ecoloy of non-biting midges (Chapman and Hall, London, 1995)
J.G. Puckett, N.T. Ouellette, J. R. Soc. Interface 11, 20140710 (2014)
D.H. Kelley, N.T. Ouellette, Sci. Rep. 3, 1073 (2013)
R.Y. Tsai, IEEE J. Robotic. Autom. RA-3, 323 (1987)
N.T. Ouellette, H. Xu, E. Bodenschatz, Exp. Fluids 40, 301 (2006)
N. Mordant, A.M. Crawford, E. Bodenschatz, Physica D 193, 245 (2004)
D.H. Kelley, N.T. Ouellette, Nat. Phys. 7, 477 (2011)
J.G. Puckett, D.H. Kelley, N.T. Ouellette, Sci. Rep. 4, 4766 (2014)
N. Khurana, N.T. Ouellette, New J. Phys. 15, 095105 (2013)
R. Ni, J.G. Puckett, E.R. Dufresne, N.T. Ouellette, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 118104 (2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ni, R., Ouellette, N. Velocity correlations in laboratory insect swarms. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 224, 3271–3277 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-50077-5
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-50077-5