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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Intrinsic Fluctuations And Driven Response Of Insect Swarms, Rui Ni, James G. Puckett, Eric R. Dufresne, Nicholas T. Ouellette
Intrinsic Fluctuations And Driven Response Of Insect Swarms, Rui Ni, James G. Puckett, Eric R. Dufresne, Nicholas T. Ouellette
Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications
Animals of all sizes form groups, as acting together can convey advantages over acting alone; thus, collective animal behavior has been identified as a promising template for designing engineered systems. However, models and observations have focused predominantly on characterizing the overall group morphology, and often focus on highly ordered groups such as bird flocks. We instead study a disorganized aggregation (an insect mating swarm), and compare its natural fluctuations with the group-level response to an external stimulus. We quantify the swarm’s frequency-dependent linear response and its spectrum of intrinsic fluctuations, and show that the ratio of these two quantities has …
Time-Frequency Analysis Reveals Pairwise Interactions In Insect Swarms, James G. Puckett, Rui Ni, Nicholas T. Ouellette
Time-Frequency Analysis Reveals Pairwise Interactions In Insect Swarms, James G. Puckett, Rui Ni, Nicholas T. Ouellette
Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications
The macroscopic emergent behavior of social animal groups is a classic example of dynamical self-organization, and is thought to arise from the local interactions between individuals. Determining these interactions from empirical data sets of real animal groups, however, is challenging. Using multicamera imaging and tracking, we studied the motion of individual flying midges in laboratory mating swarms. By performing a time-frequency analysis of the midge trajectories, we show that the midge behavior can be segmented into two distinct modes: one that is independent and composed of low-frequency maneuvers, and one that consists of higher-frequency nearly harmonic oscillations conducted in synchrony …